Small Screen Valentino
by DancingGrimm
Summary: "Oh God," John breathed, horrified. It took a lot to horrify John H. Watson. Worried now, Sherlock got up and stepped around the table, only to be foiled when John quickly turned the laptop so he couldn't see the screen. "John, what is it? What did she do?" "She put a video online...oh God..." "What? What sort of video?" "Our video, Sherlock! One that she and I made!"
1. Discovery

Sherlock raised his eyes from the article he was reading and glanced at the clock. A little after one. John wasn't the sort to stay out late on a first date, he had learned, at least not if tonight's assignation _was_ a date. Given that there was not yet any sign of John returning, though, it seemed more likely that it was a one night stand. _Another_ one night stand. Sherlock rested his journal on his chest and gave a sigh that rattled the pages.

John was something of a romantic. If he found himself sufficiently attached to a woman, he would contentedly wait and let her set the pace of their relationship. If he simply wanted a fling, however, he would turn on his formidable, if rather transient, charms and get her into bed as soon as possible. The latter type of relationship had been prevalent in John's personal life recently, almost exclusively. Sherlock was beginning to wonder if he had given up on his ideals of romance and monogamy entirely.

Silly really; John always claimed to want love and stability and companionship, but as their case load had become heavier and heavier, he had turned away from those ideas and settled for brief relationships based largely around sex, which always seemed to end with a blazing argument and something being thrown out of a window. It seemed rather foolish to Sherlock. These relationships didn't seem to make John happy in the least. In fact, over the last few months, John returned from his nights out with women almost as tense and uncomfortable as he had left. It was beginning to become trying, to the point that Sherlock was almost tempted to set him up an online dating account, or simply go out and _find_ someone suitable for him. He was fairly sure he would be able to squirrel an appropriate woman out. There were a lot of people in London, after all.

Earlier that evening, while Sherlock had been working in the computer lab at the Yard, John had started chatting up one of the women that worked there. Kathryn, but she went by Kitty, tallish, dark hair dyed red, with a big bust and a plump waist. She had taken offence to something Sherlock said to her regarding the poor quality of her hair dye, and John had weighed in to tell her 'Sherlock has a good eye for detail, but he has trouble taking the necessary step back to appreciate beauty'. Well, she'd been a goner, of course. John had perfected the way he used the tone of his voice, the angle of his stance, when he was flirting, over the time Sherlock had known him, and Kitty had happily sat with John and allowed him to 'chat her up' for nearly an hour. Then Sherlock came to the point in his testing that he needed John's help, and Kitty made clear her intention to go and have a look at John's blog ('Oh if you must, but don't expect anything impressive' ha ha ha, blah blah blah).

She must have found _something_ impressive about it, because when she returned and saw that they were nearly finished, she whispered something in John's ear that had him out of his seat and into his jacket in seconds flat, half-heartedly checking that Sherlock didn't need him any more even as he was on his way out of the door.

It was extraordinary, it really was. It wouldn't last.

John's only significant attempt at a relationship in the last few months had been with a woman named Sophia, and had been an unmitigated disaster. Sherlock had hated her from the start, naturally; she'd only started seeing John because she'd assumed that 'doctor' equated 'wealthy', and only stuck with him out of a vague ambition to mould him into something he had no interest in being. She pretended to be dim because she thought it made her more attractive, and liked to give everyone around her as many opportunities as possible to look down her cleavage. This latter point was the major source of her appeal to John, as far as Sherlock could discern. What little connection they had had was broken in a ferocious row about his ambitions and her flirting, the gist of which John had recounted to Sherlock while half drunk and mostly upside down on the sofa, as sad a man as Sherlock had ever seen.

It bothered him rather, the sadness. John was not a man to allow himself to be defeated, but it was clear that his uneven and unsatisfying romantic life was wearing on him. John had admitted that he had known from the start that things wouldn't work with Sophia, yet when Sherlock asked him why he had bothered with her at all, John had said (and Sherlock remembered it quite clearly);

"Haven't you ever wanted...something, and not been able to..."

"What?" Sherlock had asked.

And John had shaken his head, rolled himself carefully off the sofa, and dragged his weary frame off up the stairs to his room without another word.

Sherlock hated feeling that he was missing something.

He glanced again at the clock and saw that it was now almost one thirty. His phone had not yet alerted him to a text (he'd double checked), and thus he could conclude that John had gone to bed with Kitty. Sherlock hoped that it would be a case of quick sex and then home, as he would likely need John's help with the final stage of his experiment in the morning, and John never got as much sleep in a woman's bed as he did alone, in his own.

Sherlock never got as much sleep when John was away, either, a fact which had surprised him after John had moved in. He had expected co-habitation to be noisy and irritating and thoroughly inconvenient. And yes, John was often all three of these things, sometimes all at once, but sometimes the noise...helped. Sherlock couldn't find a better word for it than that. The spaces between his bouts of anguish seemed to be further apart now. He worried about himself less.

He could not say for sure if this effect was due to having a flatmate or due to having John, though he suspected the latter. He had yet to manage to satisfactorily put into words the nature of John's influence on him, but subtle as it was, it made itself known to him in the most unexpected ways. His dark moods, his 'danger nights' as Mycroft had taken to calling them, came further and further apart. His numbing periods of boredom were thinner, more easily dispelled, whether by John himself or by some outside influence. And though certain old habits still called to him from time to time, he was more able now to distract himself, usually by involving himself in John's business on the occasions that he had none of his own.

When John was out of the house more, when he was in one of his relationships, it was harder to manage. Sherlock found himself struggling, his old coping strategies, which had seemed to effective for so many years, atrophied and useless. Or perhaps, compared to the strategy of simply having John, they had been rendered so deeply inferior they could not compare.

Why then, was he considering helping John to find a suitable woman? The proposition made no sense. It was to his benefit that John remained single and thus spent more time around the flat, so why would he even consider taking measures to 'match make' him?

Sometimes Sherlock Holmes' mind was so remarkable that it even puzzled him.

Given the sombre, self analytical thoughts that had been whirring in his mind, Sherlock was surprised to find, upon being abruptly awoken, that he had fallen asleep. It was undoubtedly the case though, as a glance at the clock, once his gummy eyes had regained focus, revealed. It was now a quarter past three in the morning, and he had been woken by the opening of the living room door. Squinting across the dim room, he saw John carefully pushing the door closed and turning to creep across the floor. He held his jacket in one hand, his shoes in the other, and was tip-toeing with as much daintiness as he could muster, when Sherlock reached across to the coffee table and pushed the switch on the base of the angle poise lamp that sat there.

"Argh!" John cried, raising one hand to shield his eyes from the sudden light and incidentally hitting himself on the side of the head with a shoe. "Sherlock? What are you doing?"

"I was asleep," Sherlock replied, squinting a little himself. He watched as John took in his appearance, sprawled and untidy in his pyjama bottoms, button-up shirt and dressing gown. John made a little face of disapproval, but didn't comment.

"Why didn't you get into bed?" was all he asked.

"Because I fell asleep here," Sherlock replied, running his eyes over John as they finally began to adjust to the light. He had had penetrative sex with Kitty, as well as performing cunnilingus on her, though he couldn't tell what order these events had occurred in. Kitty had wanted him to spend the rest of the night, but John had declined and she had not argued. He had got a taxi home, but had had to wait a long time for it to arrive, and had stood on the street to do so, so as not to make himself feel awkward about leaving Kitty in the middle of the night. A one night stand then. Good.

"Good evening?" he asked, and John rolled his eyes.

"You can't tell?"

"Of course I can."

"Oh, so you were just being polite, then? Good, you're coming along nicely."

The comment was delivered with a brisk cheeriness, but the underlying tone of John's voice was weary and disheartened in a way that the late night could not account for. Had he been hoping he and Kitty would be more compatible? Had he been hoping for something more than he got? Sherlock could not say, and knew all too well that if he asked John would close down.

John went into the kitchen and clattered about a bit, making tea. Two thumps of mugs being placed on the worktop, so he was making one for Sherlock too. Sherlock pulled himself into a sitting position on the sofa and cleared a space for his mug on the coffee table. Shortly, John returned to the living room and gave Sherlock his tea, then dithered near one of the windows, sipping half-heartedly at his drink, a vague frown hovering about his brow.

"Something the matter?" Sherlock asked.

John's frown became a little more defined, but he shook his head. "No, I...it's just one of those odd little things, you know? I didn't really think about it at the time, but now it's just popped back into my head."

"What has?"

"Something Kitty said to me. Something about...the way I was in bed. What I like to do." He glanced uncomfortably at Sherlock as he said this, and Sherlock kept his expression resolutely blank so as not to put John off.

"I just...it seemed like she must have talked to somebody about me, one of my exes or somebody I'd slept with. But I can't work out who it could be. I can't think of any mutual acquaintances. None of the women I've gone out with recently have worked with her, or live near her, or anything like that."

"She may be friends with somebody without you being aware of it," Sherlock said simply.

John sighed and nodded, then turned and glanced at the clock.

"Bloody hell," he murmured. "It's well past our bedtimes, Sherlock."

Sherlock smirked at the turn of phrase. "Go to bed then," he said.

John drained his mug and reached for Sherlock's, then crossed to the kitchen to put them both by the sink. He returned to grab Sherlock's arm and, before Sherlock could decide whether to fight him off or not, pulled him to his feet.

"You too, off you go. Don't think I haven't noticed how early you've been getting up these last few mornings. Tomorrow too, I'll bet."

Sherlock gave him a glare, but it was half-hearted at best, tired as he was. He allowed John to harry him into his room and closed the door, then changed his shirt for one of the thin t-shirts he slept in and got into bed.

John's footsteps thumped up the stairs and crossed the narrow landing into his bedroom. The wardrobe doors opened, hangers clinked, the doors closed. A drawer was pulled open and scraped shut. The bed creaked.

Goodnight John, Sherlock thought.

John had forgotten to brush his teeth and would be cross with himself in the morning, even though he had reached his late thirties with half the number of fillings that the average British man had at that age. Silly John.

Sherlock drifted off to sleep thinking about dental health statistics, an ideal soporific.

::

By late morning of the following day, Sherlock was following up several emails to a zoologist of his acquaintance, when John returned from the errand to the library that Sherlock had dispatched him on. He entered the flat and placed a sheaf of murky microfiche print-outs at Sherlock's elbow, stood there for a minute or two waiting for a response, then cuffed Sherlock lightly around the back of the head.

"Thank you so much, John. That's terribly helpful," Sherlock said, smirking at his laptop screen as John marched off into the kitchen. "You're the hero of the hour."

"Bugger off," John replied, re-entering the room a moment later with a glass of orange juice. He settled at the table, opposite Sherlock, opened his own laptop, and...Sherlock watched the movements of John's left forearm surreptitiously as he operated the track pad. Ah, his blog.

"Any more thoughts on that girl's comments? Who she could know?" he asked, returning the bulk of his attention to writing his email.

John shook his head. "I think you must be right. It must be some friend of hers and I've just never connected the two of them." He chuckled a little, under his breath, and Sherlock raised his eyes to look at him.

"I was flattered at first, actually," John said. "I thought perhaps I had a good reputation. Maybe I'll just go with that first instinct and not worry about it."

"Yes," Sherlock replied, unsure of how he should respond. What was the etiquette here? Should he reassure John that his reputation was sound? He didn't know for sure if it was, but he suspected it to be the case, or John wouldn't be able to keep 'pulling' women from the limited communities of Saint Bart's and the Met.

He was trying to work up a suitable response when John swore under his breath. "What?" Sherlock asked.

"Sophia's left a comment on my last blog post," John said grimly.

"What does it say?"

"She's left a link to something...some sort of post on a website called ' '. What could that be?" John clicked on it.

"I've not heard the name before," Sherlock replied, feeling distinctly unhelpful.

John scowled at his laptop screen as the page loaded, then a faint sound came from the tiny speakers and John's eyebrows rose.

"What is it?" Sherlock asked. John shook his head, mutely, his eyes glued on the screen. His face was turning pale. Sherlock listened carefully. The sound was poor, whatever it was, staticky and inconsistent. He could hear shifting movements and distorted voices, but couldn't make out any detail.

"Oh God," John breathed, horrified.

It took a lot to horrify John H. Watson. Worried now, Sherlock got up and stepped around the table, only to be foiled when John quickly turned the laptop so he couldn't see the screen.

"John, what is it? What did she do?"

"She put a video online...oh God..."

"What? What sort of video?"

"_Our_ video, Sherlock! One that she and I made!"

John groaned and rubbed his face with both hands, and Sherlock took the opportunity to rapidly reach out and turn the laptop back towards himself.

Ah.

He'd been expecting some sort of You've Been Framed type thing, with John and Sophia falling off a patio or being attacked by a squirrel. But no, this showed something substantially different. John was quick to realise that Sherlock was looking at the screen, and so he had only a few seconds before the laptop was slammed shut, but it was enough to make out Sophia in her revealing lingerie, and John removing his briefs and dropping them off the edge of the bed. The title at the top of the screen read 'Doctor Watson's Night of Fun'.

"Ah," Sherlock said.

John glared at him.

There were many questions to be asked, but the first one that rose to the surface was, naturally; "Why did you make a sex tape with Sophia?"

"Sherlock, don't call it that!" John snapped, clutching the laptop to his chest.

"What else would you call it? It's a tape of the two of you having sex. Or at least, that's what I've seen of it would seem to imply. Does it show something else?"

John sighed. "No, but...calling it a 'sex tape' implies like we meant for it to...to..."

"But why _did_ you make it?"

"It was supposed to be just for us! Or just for Sophia, anyway. She convinced me to do it."

"You didn't want to?"

John sighed again and put the laptop down. "Well, I suppose I didn't take _much_ convincing. I was feeling a bit...well, and she got this camera out and said she'd always wanted to, so...we did. She promised she was going to keep it all to herself." he paused to sigh, then abruptly exclaimed; "_God_!"

"Why has she posted it? Does she say?" Sherlock asked.

John reopened the laptop and a crackly cry of pleasure emanated from the speakers, making Sherlock flinch, before John managed to close the tab. John's blog was left in the browser, Sophia's comment in the centre of the screen. Sophia had added only one word to the comment after pasting in the link:

'_Squirm_.'

John groaned and deleted the comment with a violent stab at the mouse button.

"Why has she done this now?" Sherlock mused, half to himself. "You broke up over two months ago."

John pursed his lips and shook his head. "'dunno," he muttered, voice flat. "She's left this same link on every fucking post for the last three...oh _fuck_!" John banged his palms down on the table, face taut with anger.

Not just anger, Sherlock noted. Humiliation and betrayal were apparent too. John's back was tense as a wire, his fingers twitching between bouts of typing and deletion. Sherlock leaned down to peer over his shoulder and look at the comments. The rest of the ones from Sophia were just the links themselves. Underneath each of these, however, were strings of comments from a variety of other people, discussing the video in terms that made it obvious they'd watched it. John was deleting these rapidly, but not before Sherlock glimpsed the names of a number of John's most loyal readers, and saw enough of their comments to get an idea of how the video had been received.

'You dog, Watson -'

' - had any idea you were so talented -'

' - should have shagged you when I had the -'

' - lucky girl, has she finally tempted you away from that -'

' - fancy getting together, I could use a bit of -'

' - wondered how you always manage to pull such fit women, now I know -'

' - me any tips, Doctor Watson?'

"At least it seems to have been well received," Sherlock offered. "Your followers are generally quite impressed."

"That's not the point, Sherlock," John gritted out. "She _knew_ I didn't want anybody seeing it. _Fuck!_ It must be all over the place by now!"

"Certainly possible," Sherlock agreed, still peering over his shoulder at the screen. "It appears several of your readers intend to repost the link on-" He was interrupted by John slamming the lid of the laptop once more.

"Sherlock, I want you to do something for me," he said in a low, controlled voice.

"Do you want me to go and talk to Sophia? I could probably get into her computer and delete-"

"No, no. I'll deal with Sophia and...I'll try and get the video taken down. Now look, I know you don't put much stock in things like promises, Sherlock."

"Well I wouldn't put it quite like that," Sherlock said. John glared at him, but he looked so upset still that Sherlock let the impending argument go.

"I want you to promise me – and by that I mean seriously, I want you to mean it and stick to it – that you won't watch this video. Will you do that for me?" 

Sherlock opened his mouth to reply with the question of _why_ he would want to watch John having sex with dreadful Sophia, when John spoke again, one word;

"_Please_."

And Sherlock was once again looking at as sad a man as he'd ever seen, and that was all wrong. John was many things, but sad shouldn't be one of them.

"Alright," he said with a shrug. John stared steadily at him until Sherlock sighed deeply and said "I promise I won't, John. I won't click the link, I won't go on this 'hotpages', you don't have anything to worry about."

John seemed to both relax and tense up in the same instant, and he nodded wearily, drumming his fingers on the lid of the laptop. "Okay. Thank you," was all he said.

Sherlock picked up the sheaf of printed pages and took them into the kitchen, where he'd set out the map of the churchyard where a body had been found two days earlier. In the living room, he heard John resume his deleting, the steady click of keys and mouse buttons occasionally interrupted by hushed profanity. It was more distracting than he would have expected, and despite the reasonably interesting case (at least a seven) in front of him, his thoughts kept returning to John's reaction.

Because Sherlock could understand the anger, and the sense of betrayal that John was suffering. But the humiliation was a different matter. This situation left John with little room to be embarrassed, surely. The reaction on his blog had been entirely positive, comprised of admiration of his performance and invitations for intimacy. John was not shy of his body, nor his sexuality, and while he was still somewhat aggravated over his failed relationship with Sophia, he felt no shame about it.

So why, then, the humiliation? What did John expect to happen?

Sherlock was only too ready to admit that he had something of a blind spot when it came to sex. He had barely any experience, which was remiss of him really, given his vocation. But he simply couldn't make himself feel interested in it. It just seemed so tawdry and dull. John, on the other hand, had lost his virginity at fifteen and had taken every reasonable opportunity to have sex since then, as far as Sherlock could tell. He was both more experienced and better emotionally equipped to enjoy and understand sex.

So if something was bothering John, then perhaps this was one of those rare occasions when Sherlock would have to trust John's knowledge.

If John was worried, perhaps it meant there was something to worry _about_.

::

I know, I know, I haven't posted anything at all in ages. I've gotten out of my good writing habits really badly, but hopefully I'll be able to snap myself back into them.

Anyway, I hope that you enjoy the story. I've mentioned the general premise to a few people and have received some very enthusiastic responses, so hopefully it'll meet people's expectations.

As always I love and appreciate feedback, if you've time to leave me some.

And yes, I would totally have watched it had I had the link. Come on, seriously; wouldn't you?

Cheers,

DG


	2. Experience

Over the following days, John staunchly refused to discuss the matter of the video, but this could not prevent it from hanging over his head, almost a visible pall. Sherlock would have been lying if he had said he wasn't intrigued by the matter. Of course, he felt sorry for John, who was his friend, after all, no matter how little regard Sherlock had for sentiment. Still though, it was an interesting situation, if a rather irritating one. With no experience of such situations to fall back on, Sherlock couldn't really make himself understand Sophia's motives, and thus couldn't really feel satisfied while the matter was ongoing. In fact, it was Sherlock's self professed lack of experience that made the situation so fascinating to him.

His own sexual encounters had been few, varied and, without exception, disappointing. He could recall each and every one with perfect clarity, had come to understand the behaviour of the other person in each instance (though in many cases long after the fact), and yet was frustratingly unable quite get his mind around the reason for his own disinterest and dissatisfaction. It made no sense that he had had, essentially, the same reaction to so many different streams of input, as it were.

The first had been when he was in university. He had been nineteen, an age which, he had been assured by some of his tiresome peers, was far too old to be a virgin. Apparently the fact of his virginity had reached the ears of a particular young woman who found it an alluring feature in a lover, and she had made it her business to be wherever Sherlock was for a few days. Finally, the circumstances she had engineered found them alone together in the small, musty bedroom she inhabited in one of the city's many student houses, under the guise of having him show her how to change the battery in her camera. She had spoken to him in teasing words that he had later realised were intended as seductive until, frustrated that she had received so little response from what must have been her best efforts, she finally made a distinct overture; she offered to let him touch her breasts.

Sherlock had never touched breasts before. Or at least, not in memory, though he knew he had been breast fed as an infant. His natural curiosity led him to accept the offer, and so she whipped off her top and bra and invited Sherlock to sit on the bed with her. His careful approach seemed to surprise her, as he assessed the texture of the skin, the weight, the density, and she chattered at him in a sultry voice that would no doubt have had an affect on nearly any other man. Eventually she asked him what he thought. "They're very odd," he replied, and found himself flung bodily out of the door to her bedroom and told in no uncertain terms to leave the house and never return. Given that Sherlock had only been in the house as a result of her manipulations, he wasn't terribly put out at this command, but the girl's response galled him.

They _were_ odd. The flesh was soft under the surface and off-puttingly gristly nearer the centre, and the whole structure had shifted and rippled in an unsatisfactorily unpredictable pattern. Her nipples and the skin around them had changed in shape and texture under his hands in a disconcerting way, and he had almost asked her to make them stop so he could examine properly, before recalling that it was an autonomic reflex.

He was jeered at for the incident, but not by anybody whose opinion mattered to him.

His second experience had occurred at university as well, a couple of years later, with a student who was in several of the same modules as him. They had agreed to collaborate on a piece of coursework that saw them spending a lot of time in the lab together. His new 'friend' liked to make comments about how he considered it 'natural' for a young man to 'experiment' while at university, and Sherlock hadn't realised that he was referring to something other than their testing of solvents until frustration won over and the other man explained it to him.

Safe in the knowledge that another breast incident was not forthcoming, Sherlock accepted an invitation to the other young man's room in the halls of residence and had allowed himself to be kissed and manhandled, and even permitted for his shirt to be unbuttoned, before he and his partner realised simultaneously that Sherlock did not have an erection. Assured by his partner that it would be difficult to proceed in his intended activities without an erection on, at least, Sherlock's part, Sherlock made ready to excuse himself when he was stopped by an excited touch on his leg. "We could do something a bit different, actually," the other suggested, and so Sherlock spent an evening watching his would-be sexual partner masturbate, a situation which the young man seemed to find greatly satisfying and which Sherlock himself found quite fascinating. A human body in orgasm was a remarkable sight.

Once their project was finished, his partner's interest in him seemed to fade and Sherlock found no reason to try and win it back. They grew apart and took no part in one another's lives beyond the occasional exchange of pleasantries.

That had, to date, been Sherlock's best sexual experience.

Sadly there had been others.

Once out of uni and newly independent in London, he had moved into a small but nicely appointed flat and lived off his allowance while he pursued possible avenues of employment. On the day he moved in, he was greeted by his new neighbour, an attractive middle aged woman who wore figure-hugging dresses and toweringly high heels. She had made a comment about how nice it would be to have a young man about the place, and it had been only in retrospect that Sherlock had realised, from her body language and tone of voice, that she had been flirting with him.

For the first few months of his residence there, she had continued to take every possible opportunity to make advances on him, from the fairly polite ("Why it's young Sherlock, and don't you look handsome today") to the very suggestive ("It'll be a lucky woman that finally gets her hands on you, and I bet you know just what to do when a woman's hands are on you, don't you darling") and Sherlock had found it to be at that awkward level of annoying; he didn't particularly want it to keep happening, but he didn't find it quite troublesome enough to take measures to make it stop.

Matters came to a head when she knocked on his door one evening looking mildly upset, dressed in a short kimono-style dressing gown. She explained that her water had stopped right when she was about to have a shower and asked if he would come and have a look at the pipes. Later in life, Sherlock had heard of the association between plumbers and stereotypical porn film plots, and wondered if that was the sort of lewd fantasy setting she had been aiming for. Whatever the case, he had been in her flat not 30 seconds, and hadn't even made it to the bathroom door, when she dropped her kimono and held her arms out to him in an obvious 'come hither' gesture, confidence and excitement written all over her face.

He had skirted around her and left the flat at a jog, and over the next few weeks was called all sorts of rude names by her under her breath when they crossed paths. Adding to this, he was disturbed in the middle of the night several times by sex noises from her flat (which he was fairly sure were generated by her alone) and got several leaflets on erectile dysfunction treatment pushed through his letter box.

This unpleasant situation finally came to an end one afternoon when Mycroft, a flustered and overworked Junior Minister at that point, had arrived at his flat to discuss the matter of an uncle of theirs who had just been sectioned, and she had opened her front door as Sherlock was grudgingly letting Mycroft in. "You could have just told me you were gay!" she snapped, and slammed her door closed.

Mycroft and Sherlock had stared at one another and, with silent accord, the Holmes brothers agreed to never mention the matter again.

A few years of 'drought' had followed, while Sherlock dealt with certain problems that no doubt rendered him a less attractive prospect than previously. Finally though, he established himself as a detective and, from among his earlier cases, a new suitor appeared.

A male model had asked him to investigate a potential scandal in the making, when a photographer he was particularly fond of had been accused of involvement in a blackmail attempt against the owner of a pornographic magazine. It had been a tricky case, but Sherlock had dealt with the matter and the case had ended with the magazine owner being tried for fraud due to a complex plot. Genuinely interesting actually, it had been at least an eight. The magazine owner had been making himself appear to be a blackmail victim in order to conceal the fact that he was the perpetrator, and had made hundreds of thousands of pounds out of his victims.

Sherlock was rather surprised that his client, informed of his success over the phone, had offered to visit him and bring payment in person, and arrived shortly thereafter. A strikingly handsome man, the client looked entirely out of place in Sherlock's messy flat, and even Sherlock was aware of it. He also became aware, for possibly the first time, of another person's beauty. The client was red haired, and wore his hair rather long and swept back, framing perfectly the clean lines of his facial structure and the clear, rich green of his eyes. His physique was lean and athletic, shown off to perfection by his well cut clothes. He smelled pleasantly of wheat-germ and citrus.

He had handed over a cheque for Sherlock's fee and had then eloquently expressed his gratitude and relief, at some length. Normally Sherlock would have interrupted and shooed him away, but he was so taken aback by his own reaction to the man's appearance, his attractiveness, that he couldn't quite make himself do it. He just stood there, looking at him. After being stared at for some time, the client gave Sherlock a careful sort of look, then approached him, placed his hands on Sherlock's chest, and leaned in to kiss him, sliding a hand down to his groin.

Sherlock, having long since deduced that the client was in love with his favourite photographer (who in turn was not yet ready to come out of the closet) turned his head away. The client appeared only mildly upset and allowed Sherlock to gabble out an explanation, his observations. After learning that Sherlock had noticed the object of his affections, the client finally thanked him, rather more formally than before, and left, subdued.

To this day, Sherlock wondered if, had circumstances been a little different, he might have accepted the other man's advances. H wondered what might have happened if he had, if there would have been anywhere to go, or if it would have been a singular event. He truly couldn't imagine an outcome.

Some time after this, Sherlock had found himself with reason to pay regular visits to a chemist who was based at the University of London, and who had agreed to help him develop a new process he had thought up for forensic use. She was a vastly intelligent and quick minded woman of around 45, divorced, with one daughter who was currently studying for a psychology degree. He admired her knack for lateral problem solving, as well as her broad and excellent knowledge of her field. She admired his resourcefulness and eagerness to learn.

They worked on the process for a few hours at a time, whenever they were both available, usually in the early evenings. They got along well and easily held one another's interest. They would talk about previous experiments, observations, developments in the field, and their relationship grew into something rather warmer than was strictly professional. After they had been working together for several weeks, she reached over one evening and patted her fingers thoughtfully through his hair, before asking him if he wanted to go and have a drink with her. He agreed and they set things to rights in the lab before going to a nearby café, where they drank liqueur coffees at a round table by the window, and talked about the forensic aspects of several recent cases to have gone through the courts. When they said goodnight, she touched his hair again, a confusing but not unpleasant little gesture.

This had continued quite pleasantly for some time, until one evening, when the work was almost done, the process complete and only the necessary publishable materials left to put together, she had sat down next to him with a sigh and told him that she was leaving London. She had been offered a position as head of the chemistry department at Edinburgh University, and it was far too good an opportunity to pass up. She had enjoyed their drinks together, she had told him, and their conversation, and his company. She would miss him. Then she had framed his face with her small, dry hands and kissed him on the lips.

He had enjoyed it, and told her so. But she was going to Edinburgh and he was staying in London, and it seemed there was nothing more to say. She left before the article on their process was published. He remained attentive for news about her and had been pleased to hear from mutual acquaintances that she had settled in well at Edinburgh and that her career was progressing impressively. Which was...good. Good.

He would rather have liked her to have stayed in London. He wasn't quite sure what he would have wanted to have come of it, but it would have been nice, to see her around. Not that he wanted her to throw over such a good opportunity for her career, just...she was interesting, enjoyable company. Sherlock had never known anything quite like it before, and had resigned himself to never knowing it again.

Not long after she had left, Sherlock had run into Mrs Hudson again, and gone to look at the upstairs flat at Baker Street, and had then dropped by Bart's to put his new forensic process to good use for the first time, when he had found himself being introduced to John Watson, his friend.

Friendship, Sherlock had discovered, was a set of emotions and responses that suited him far better than romance or love. Of course, that is not to say that it was ever a natural fit. He had struggled to make sense of his growing attachment to John, to understand why he accepted things from John that would cause him to drive away others. He felt such a fool when he realised, after many long months of cohabitation and companionship, that he simply _liked_ John, liked him to an extent that he had previously thought himself incapable of.

John was John, and didn't try to be anything else. He was imperfect and angry and forgiving and trusty. He let Sherlock get away with murder but not with leaving wet teabags on the table. He filled little niches in Sherlock's life that Sherlock had never realised were empty. He put himself between Sherlock and the things that threatened to hurt him, and let Sherlock do the same for him. He was a good man, a good friend.

Sherlock often thought that his friendship with John was not unlike what people romanticised into the concept of 'true love'. Their bond was deep and steady, their confidence in one another absolute, even if trust or reliability should waver. Without the sexual aspect that seemed to send people into fits of madness, however, their relationship was ideal.

Then they met Irene.

At first, it was a rare, intriguing treat to find a person so complex and so well concealed that there was nothing for him to work from. Her cleverness was astonishing from the get-go, her motivations a tantalising enigma, her words like a carefully wielded knife. They had captivated one another, and she had put him through hell, and he had broken her heart.

That was that, more or less.

Except, he had gone to save her life, hadn't he. He hadn't owed her anything, he knew that. But she was still far too rare, too interesting a creature to simply be culled. He had delighted in puzzling out how to save her, working frantically on the plane on his way to find her as he weighed up timing and tactics, the likely number of men guarding her, the most likely mode of execution. He had pulled the wool so thoroughly over his brother's eyes that it had made him want to laugh.

The fight had been exhilarating, the escape frenetic, and when they finally made it to the safe house he had arranged, she threw her arms around him and kissed him passionately, desperately. He didn't know if it was adrenaline or hormones, or simply Irene...but he could have done what she wanted. He could have gone to bed with her, had sex with her, and enjoyed it. He could have let her finish undoing his clothes and allowed her to do what she wanted with him.

Had it not been for a sudden wash of memories.

He remembered how she taunted him when he was losing consciousness on her bedroom floor.

He remembered her calling him a virgin like it was something to be ashamed of.

He remembered how uneasy John, trusty John, had been around her, and that made his mind up.

He'd pushed her away and watched the desperation in her eyes increase tenfold...before it disappeared entirely, tucked away somewhere that he'd never see it again, because she had far better places to hide her secrets than in a phone.

He didn't regret it.

Sex was such a very strange activity. People were so desperate for it, and yet so frightened of it. They wanted the social power of being able to get it, and yet they hid their own reality of it away so urgently. There were people who concealed so much of themselves to try and find the right match, never realising that it was counter-productive in the extreme to do so, people who went their whole lives thinking they were doing it wrong but were simply doing it with the wrong people. He'd heard the stories. He'd been told them, or had observed or deduced them. Hundreds of them, like bad novels.

Why would he want to involve himself in that mess? He had his work, and his friendship with John. When he felt a physical urge, masturbation did away with it neatly and efficiently. He was satisfied. He didn't need sex, hardly anybody did. Not really.

And yet John, who was so much _better_ than most people, pursued it to his own detriment. Sophia was only the latest of a line of unsuitable women (though after this video incident Sherlock was inclined to consider her among the worst of them) and John would offer no explanation, seemed not to even have one, as to why he had connected himself to any of them, even for the space of an evening.

A part of Sherlock's mind was telling him to forget it. If he had learned one thing from John, it was that sometimes people do stupid things for no real reason. Maybe that was just it, that simple. Maybe John had let Sophia go ahead with this silly video thing to ingratiate himself to her, to ensure sex would follow, as he had said. Sherlock was almost tempted to listen to that little bit of his mind and let it drop.

But Sherlock Holmes was not a fan of letting things drop, and there was more here than met the eye, he was sure of it. Too many little questions that didn't make sense, that he could let slide for another person but not John, not the man he knew so well.

He should investigate.

But he'd promised.

No, he'd promised not to watch the _video_, not to not investigate!

But surely the latter was implicit in the former...

But John knew better than to leave things implied with him!

But without watching the video, he would have an incomplete data field.

But if he watched the video, he would upset John. And John had been so sad.

John shouldn't be sad.

What to do?

::

It's so damn hard to write introspective Sherlock, but I felt it was necessary for certain things that happen in the rest of the story that he get all this straight, as it were.

In case you were wondering, when Sherlock mentions his uncle got 'sectioned', this is a term used in British Law when a person's mental health condition is declared severe enough that they can be given treatment against their will, often while they are held in a hospital or other facility. I like to imagine that Mycroft and Sherlock adored their eccentric uncle as kids, and were genuinely surprised to discover that he was insane.

Sherlock trying out his forensic process for the first time when John shows up was a reference to their first meeting in A Study In Scarlet.

And yes, all of you who guessed with the first chapter, Sherlock has left himself a little loophole, but he hasn't used it. Yet.

:D


	3. Repercussions

John got jeered at in the street.

He'd been recognised a few times before from when his photograph had been in the papers along-side Sherlock's, but that had generally just led to people waving at him, or trying to surreptitiously take his picture on their phones. This was far worse.

He got called horny, pervert, shagger, creep, and other variations on the theme, including the names of a few apparently famous porn stars whom Sherlock had had to look up.

John was flirted with in inappropriate situations, such as while trying to change a patient's dressing in the clinic, during a phone call with his sister on the tube, and at a crime scene, peering into the thoracic cavity of a stabbing victim.

John had been deeply unhappy about the former situation, to the point that Sherlock and Lestrade had had to intervene more than once to prevent him from throttling anyone.

To Sherlock's surprise however, John seemed equally unhappy about the latter. He turned down every approach, every flirtation, almost before it could be voiced. Quite often, he glared.

John had a very effective glare, but it couldn't stop the torrent of people seeking his company in their beds. Sherlock couldn't work out why John kept turning them away; was it because they were only interested in sex? Or because they made it so obvious that they had seen that video? Had the whole situation done some sort of damage to John's libido? It was hard to say for sure, but John seemed to be struggling with keeping his temper in check.

Then it got worse.

::

A few days after the video was posted, Sherlock took John with him to Bart's when he needed to do some work in the lab, and John was drawn aside by Mike Stamford for a chat. They went only as far as the small anteroom to the lab, where Mike obviously thought Sherlock would be unable to hear them talking (Mike being happily unaware of just how well Sherlock had managed to train his ears) and chatted about boring rugby.

Sherlock tuned them out and carried on with his work, until he began picking up a few more interesting words.

"-were you thinking? I mean, she was never what you'd call reasonable, was she."

"I suppose...god, I hate this. I feel like everybody's looking at me all the time."

"Well, they are!"

"Thanks Mike. Up yours."

"It's a good thing, surely. I mean, while the attention's on you, it ought to be easy to find somebody else to go out with. Somebody who isn't a bloody psycho."

"She was hardly that bad."

"Well, you know what I mean. Come on, John. I've had at least half a dozen people who work here coming up to me and asking if you're still single. You must have been having offers all over the place. Why don't you, you know, make the best of a bad situation?"

"I'm...I'm getting a bit long in the tooth for sleeping around, don't you think?"

"Well go on dates with them, Mister One-Track-Mind!"

"_Doctor_ One-Track-Mind, thank you."

"Yes, all right, but you know what I mean. You could...find somebody. That's what you want, isn't it?"

John sighed noisily, and Sherlock abruptly realised that he had been standing stock still, a beaker in one hand and a pair of tongs in the other, listening. He didn't move.

"I don't know what...I don't want to go out with somebody just because they saw a tape of me having sex, you know? It's so sordid and...I don't know, shallow I suppose."

"Well I wouldn't be so quick to let the opportunities pass, mate. And it was a _hell_ of a tape."

"...Somebody told you about it? Who? Not one of the students?"

"No, no, I uh...I saw it."

There was a chillingly still silence for all of five seconds, before John spoke.

"_What_?"

"Only part of it! Don't get in my face like that! Look, It was just going around the hospital mailing list-"

"What?! Oh my god Mike, that's got to be nearly eight hundred people!"

"Closer to a thousand these days, but yeah. I mean, it must have been hardly anybody that actually watched it. The firewall won't let us access stuff like that, so it'd only be the people who thought to forward it to their personal email-"

"Oh my god! Did you...you just watched the start, right?"

"Yeah. I mean, Katherine thought it was really funny, being that it was you, and so we had a little look at it-"

"...Yeah?"

"Well, we didn't watch much, like I say. But you know, it got us thinking about digging out the old camera-"

"Please, _please_ Mike, just shut up."

"All right! No need to get cross."

There was silence in the anteroom, and Sherlock suddenly became aware that he'd been entirely too quiet for the last few minutes. To start making noise now though would be a dead give-away, so when John peered around the door, he pretended to be deeply involved in reading the fine-printed list of instructions on the side of the steriliser. John disappeared from the door again after a moment, and Sherlock heard a quiet murmur, followed by his and Mike's footsteps heading off down the corridor, towards the little canteen.

Tea, always John Watson's drug of choice.

So John wanted to pursue only women who were interested in his personality over his sexual proclivities? That was a reasonable explanation. It fitted.

But something was still telling Sherlock that it wasn't quite the whole picture.

::

Not long after he'd found the video, John had spent a good couple of hours emailing and phoning various people in order to try and get the video taken off the website. The operators of the 'Hotpages' website had a very impressive document posted on their site about copyrights and ownership, and about the informed consent of those involved in all the videos. In practice, however, things were not quite as stated. Sherlock suspected this may have something to do with the staggering number of hits that John's video had garnered; all of London (or the equivalent number of people from less interesting places) must have watched it. It was easily the most watched video on the site.

The day after he discovered it, John spent the whole morning and most of the afternoon getting more and more stressed, feverishly checking his emails and his blog as if he was holding out hope that somebody would help him. He left score marks in the surface of the table with his nails while struggling not to swear at somebody he was on the phone with. He combed through websites on consumer advice and personal rights and quoted them insistently at the people he was communicating with. He sent photos of himself and of his ID, to prove that he was indeed the man in the video. He almost screamed down the phone when the person on the other end of the line told him that he would have to provide proof that he had not been informed that the video would be posted.

Seeing that John was seeing red, Sherlock had snatched the phone away from him at that point, and spoken to the person (turned out to be the website owner) himself. He quoted the scientific law that a negative could not be proven, then proceeded to bombard the woman with law and logic until she broke down and agreed to remove the video. Thus it was that 'Doctor Watson's Night of Fun' was removed from Hotpages, and John breathed a sigh of relief and patted Sherlock's shoulder gratefully.

Nothing was that simple though, of course.

::

The day after John's talk with Mike, five whole days after the Sophia had posted the video, Sherlock needed to go to the morgue and John came along with him. Sherlock later regretted not insisting that John stay at home.

Molly took one look at John, turned bright red, emitted a painfully high pitched squeak, and vanished into her office at a far greater speed than Sherlock would have expected her to be capable of.

John rubbed his hands over his face and let out a soft moan.

"Damn the woman!" Sherlock had exclaimed, wishing for the thousandth time that Molly Hooper would learn a bit of subtlety. "You can go if you want to John, I'll have a word with her."

"No, no Sherlock, it's...I'm okay. Let me see if I can talk to her for a minute, okay?"

Sherlock nodded and stayed put as John squared his shoulders and strode towards the closed office door. He tapped carefully and, from where he was standing, Sherlock could just see the edge of Molly's face as she opened the door a little way and peeped out.

"I take it you watched that video then? Any...anything you want to say to me?" John asked quietly. Molly replied with a gush of apologies.

"Okay, okay. Look, just... let's not let it get weird, all right?"

Molly nodded energetically and apologised again, stuttering out some excuse about the hospital email and thinking it was a joke, not realising it was really him until it was too late.

John was looking carefully at her face. Did he think she was lying, Sherlock wondered? She was. She'd no doubt thought herself very daring and adventurous when she decided to watch a video of somebody she knew in real life having sex, but had been completely unprepared for the reality of seeing him in that context, and of seeing him in person not long afterwards. Stupid.

"Look, it's okay. Just...just don't watch it any more, yeah? Let's do a Sherlock and delete the whole thing."

Molly emerged from the office then, still red faced but less shocky looking. Sherlock gave her a narrow glare, but she didn't seem to notice it. She wasn't looking John in the eye, and Sherlock was standing more or less behind him, so for once she wasn't staring at him.

"Everything sorted?" Sherlock asked finally, breaking the awkward quiet. "Good. Then let's get to work before rigour sets in."

::

Two days after John had got the video taken down, it was back. It had a different title and had been posted under a different user name on the site, but it was still the same thing. And, once again, Sophia had been all over John's blog leaving links.

John angrily typed up an ill-advised blog post, all searing and frustration and admonitions not to watch it. The responses he got this time were rather meaner than the last lot, and mostly anonymously posted. A lot of people seemed to now be watching his blog purely for the porn related drama, and they were, to Sherlock's opinion, of a rather lower standard than the regular readers. Many of them seemed to be of the opinion that John was an idiot for protesting against the posting of the video, and that he should just man up and enjoy the attention. Sherlock logged in on his own laptop while John was ranting and huffing over these and told the posters exactly what he thought of them and their juvenile attitudes towards sex and privacy, and deduced a few choice, embarrassing details about them from their vocabulary and sentence structure.

It was the first time that Sherlock had been mean to people in blog comments and John hadn't deleted them. He'd just read them, glanced across the room at Sherlock, and given a little half nod of his head. Which would do. Vengeance approved.

That afternoon, he began again the laborious process of trying to get the video taken down once again, even more frustrated and angry and offended than before. He seemed to truly frighten a couple of the people he spoke to on the phone, and was ferociously bashing out an email on his laptop when Sherlock decided to offer help.

"Would you like me to call Mycroft?" he asked, and John stared at him.

"You...you hate phoning Mycroft. Why would you phone him?" he asked, confused and preoccupied. He returned to his noisy typing before Sherlock even began to explain.

"He could get the video taken down for good. He could even get the whole site taken down. Or perhaps he could even do something with Sophia's IP address, stop her from being able to-"

"Sherlock, no. I...I appreciate the offer, but I really don't want Mycroft involved in...oh holy shit, he probably knows all about this, doesn't he," John muttered turning pale.

"Almost undoubtedly," Sherlock replied, and John pushed his chair back, put his head in his hands and groaned.

"Is he likely to have...oh god."

"He won't have watched it," Sherlock replied, watching John carefully. Why would he even think that he might? "One of his minions might have done, but he won't."

"You're certain?"

"Of course. He thinks himself above such things." John still looked worried. "He won't watch it, John. I'm absolutely sure."

"But if you ask him about it, he might then."

"He wouldn't!" The very idea of Mycroft sitting at his computer watching amateur porn on a website was ridiculous. Mycroft had a collection of custom made porn films on DVD in a floor safe under his bed that he thought Sherlock didn't know about. "Let me get in touch with him. He can deal with it."

But John just shook his head. "Thanks Sherlock, but I think I've got to deal with this myself. Otherwise, who's to say it won't happen again, eh? I've got to...I've got to work out a way to make her leave me alone, take it down for good."

"Why did you and she break up?" Sherlock asked. He'd never asked for specifics before, content with what he'd deduced, but there was always something.

"It just didn't work out," John replied tiredly. "We wanted different things, our interests were too far apart...it was just sex, really. We weren't that bothered with each other beyond that."

Sherlock nodded. What a ridiculous situation to be in, but then John was often prone to such things. "So, whose decision was it, to break up?" he asked.

"It was mutual, really. Well, actually...I suppose it was mostly her. She gave me an ultimatum, I thought she was being unreasonable and she kicked me out of her flat. Then, we spoke on the phone the next day and she gave me the ultimatum again. I said no again, and we agreed to break up."

"What was the ultimatum?" Sherlock asked.

John sighed deeply and drooped back in his chair. "She wanted me to stop helping on your cases and go back to working in a hospital."

"What? Why?" 

"I don't...well, I've got an idea of why, but I don't know for sure. I think she wanted to get married and had decided I'd do, but I'd need to be making a lot more money for her to be happy."

"Would you have married her?"

"No," John said with a soft snort. "God no, I didn't love her. She didn't love me either, she'd just decided she wanted to marry. I suppose her sister and her best friend both got married last year, maybe she thought...I don't know. Her mind worked in weird ways sometimes."

Sherlock snorted. "That's an unnecessarily nice way of putting it, John." John gave a little half-hearted attempt at a laugh. It came out more like another groan.

There was only really one question to be asked about the whole situation, and Sherlock hadn't asked it yet. He needed to, though. He didn't have enough of the pieces to work it out for himself, and John's adamance that he not get involved was throwing him off. The pieces he did have didn't make sense. So, he would have to ask.

"Why is Sophia doing this, John?"

John shook his head and turned back to his laptop. "I don't know, Sherlock. I wish I did."

John was a terrible liar.

::

The next day, the case that Sherlock had been working on all week took an unexpected turn when the murderer confessed in full and handed himself in. It was most inconsiderate of him, as Sherlock had put a lot of hours in on this particular case and had been enjoying himself. Thus he was upset and agitated, and so when Lestrade requested that he go over to Scotland Yard and let them have the information and evidence he'd collected so it could be taken into consideration for the court case, John offered to go with him. For Lestrade's sake, so he said.

Bad idea.

Things had been going so well. They had been rushed up to Lestrade's office by a junior officer who seemed to think everything was a matter of urgency, and had found Lestrade enjoying a coffee break with a newspaper open on his desk. Sherlock had got in a few remarks about the level of professionalism on display, which had led to some enjoyable badinage between the three of them, and shortly afterwards they had got down to business.

The hours of research and logical reasoning that Sherlock had committed to the case had not been entirely wasted, it seemed, as the forensic team had done a remarkably shoddy job and had missed most of the usable data that Sherlock had managed to gather. Thus, over the course of two hours, Lestrade's ridiculous opinion that the murderer had falsely turned himself in to protect somebody else was quashed, and Lestrade and John were left mildly disappointed at the lack of drama. Then John happened to look through the folder Sherlock had put together on the murder victim and came to a photo of the lady in question's 20-something daughter.

"She's very pretty," he commented idly, and Lestrade had leaned over to look and nodded in agreement.

"Yeah. I thought you preferred blondes though, John."

It would have been a perfectly unremarkable, throwaway comment, if not for the way his eyes suddenly widened as he realised what he had said. Sophia was blonde. And John, while no deductive genius, was not stupid.

"Oh no," John breathed. "Jesus Greg, not you too!"

Lestrade went pale. Sherlock glared at him.

"Well...I...oh come on, John!" Lestrade fumbled. "It's not every day one of your mates becomes a porn star!"

John did that thing where it looked like his face was going to explosively detach itself from the rest of his head and attack people, but when he spoke it was in a low, sibilant tone.

"I. Am. Not. A. Porn star! She was supposed to keep it private!"

"I know mate, but-"

"No. No 'buts', Greg. What if you were in my situation, eh? Would you like your friends watching you in bed?"

Lestrade lowered his eyes and shook his head. "Sorry mate," he said, chagrined. John stared at him for a long moment, searchingly, like he was waiting for something else to happen. Then he glanced self-consciously at Sherlock, looked back to Lestrade, and nodded.

"We'll say no more about it, okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, all right mate. You won't hear another word about it from me."

That seemed to be that, and while John was still bristling a little bit, it wasn't Lestrade specifically that he was angry with now. They said their goodbyes and Sherlock and John left the office to weave their way through the cubicles and past bits of office equipment towards the lift...

And they were almost there, almost away, when bloody fucking miserable pain-in-the-arse Donovan piped up.

"Oi, Watson!" she called across the room, acquiring not only John's attention, but that of about fifteen CID officers as well. Donovan waited for John to turn to face her, then grinned.

"Nice cock," she said loudly. "True what they say, eh? Short men, making up for their height in, ah, _other_ departments."

There was the distinct sound of laughter being muffled behind a hand from somewhere to their left, and a few titters going unmuffled around the rest of the room. All faces, including Donovan's triumphant smirk, turned to John.

John stared carefully at her, waiting to hear if there was more. He stared silently, intently, until the smirk began to peel away from her lips. Then John turned on his heel and walked the last few feet to the lift.

Sherlock turned his best glare on Donovan, but she didn't even seem to notice, gawping at John with confusion and annoyance. Sherlock's look was enough to send the onlookers scattering though, and there was only Donovan left staring after John, when the lift arrived and they both got in and left.

::

When the video was reposted onto a new website, John finally bit the bullet and phoned Sophia. Sherlock was on the sofa pretending to be asleep, when he heard John sigh loudly from where he sat at the kitchen table, the slight scrape as he picked up his phone, and the soft beeps as he scrolled through his phone book, trying to find the right number.

Sherlock knew who he was phoning, not through any deduction, but because John was very quietly muttering '_sophia sophia sophia_' under his breath as he searched for her name in the list.

Sherlock closed his eyes and opened his mouth wide to ensure his breathing was as quiet as possible to his own ears. With any luck, he would hear some of Sophia's side of the call.

As it turned out, he didn't need much luck. The moment she answered John's call, Sophia began shouting recriminations. John was, apparently, a cheater, a liar and an unforgivable excrement (not quite her words) and was not worth speaking to. John's appeal for mercy with regards to the video fell on deaf ears, and she hung up the phone. John made a noise of frustration, and Sherlock heard a creaky thud as he dropped heavily onto one of the stools at the kitchen table. A minute or two of silence, and the phone rang. John scrabbled for it hurriedly, trying to prevent it from waking Sherlock in all likelihood.

"Hello again," he said wearily to whomever had called. The answering voice was quieter this time, but Sherlock was quite certain it was Sophia.

"I don't...no, I'm _not_ admitting anything. What exactly do you think I did?"

There was a pause, during which Sophia's voice gained enough volume that again Sherlock heard accusations of cheating.

"I didn't cheat on you!" John exclaimed. "Who do you think...no, Sophia listen, I...why do you think I cheated? Will you bloody answer me!?" John was clearly struggling to keep his voice low, still under the impression that Sherlock was asleep. He was getting angrier all the same.

Then Sophia must have said something that sucked the wind out of his sails though, because his next response was;

"No. No, it isn't obvious! What are you...no! No. Sophia, it's not...no."

He sounded defeated. Lying, certainly. But he hadn't cheated on Sophia, Sherlock was sure of it. What could she have said to him just then?

"Sophia, this isn't about...listen, will you just stop this nonsense with the video? No, when we made it, you _swore_... damn it, don't you realise this is illegal? I've talked to...will you _listen to me_!"

That seemed to be that for reasonable conversation, as Sophia was now shouting again and John's responses became increasingly loud and sibilant. Sherlock sat up, preparing himself to pretend he had just been woken. After a couple of minutes of increasingly incoherent snapping and snarling, John hung up the phone, slapped it onto the kitchen table and stalked back into the living room.

"Sorry," he murmured, glancing at Sherlock. "I didn't mean to get so..." he shrugged and dropped wearily into his chair.

"Sophia isn't going to take the video down, I gather?" Sherlock asked.

"Nope. She's getting revenge on me."

"For what?"

John frowned. "It's hard to say, exactly. She says I cheated on her, but I think she knows it isn't true. Just..." he flopped back into his seat with a gusty sigh, rubbing his hands over his face. "You know what, Sherlock? I could really do with just an hour or two of not thinking about this. Do you mind?"

Sherlock nodded and reached for the tv remote on the coffee table. He switched the telly on, found the channel with the rugby match he'd seen listed in the paper earlier, and turned the sound down to John's preferred volume.

"Thanks," John said quietly, and they sat and watched together for a while in silence.

::

Unfortunately only an hour after the conclusion of the rugby game (which John had thoroughly enjoyed to the point that he cheered along with the crowd at the final score) the last straw landed squarely on the camel's back. John had gone out to collect the Chinese food he had ordered from the little restaurant a couple of streets away, and Sherlock had emerged from the flat to meet him as he came in, having not eaten all day and suddenly desperately hungry for his prawn fried rice. By sheer coincidence, Mrs Hudson emerged from the door of her living room, looked straight at John and said;

"Oh hello dear, out for some takeaway condom?"

There had been a moment of confusion while all present went back over the words and tried to make sense of them. Then a moment of dead silence when all present came to the conclusion that it had been a quite disastrous, but perfectly exemplar, Freudian slip.

John let the bag of food containers droop in his hand as his head dropped so his chin almost touched his chest.

"Mrs Hudson..." he began, but couldn't finish the sentence. Sherlock just stared at him from the top of the stairs, no idea what he should be doing.

"Oh dear, I didn't mean...you know it was just a silly...oh dear."

John groaned softly.

Sherlock came out of his fugue of confusion and jogged down the stairs, taking the bag of food from John's limp fingers and giving Mrs Hudson a glare that sent her scuttling back into her living room, spilling apologies as she went. John let Sherlock shoo him up the stairs and into the flat, head down all the way. He slumped back down into his chair without even taking his jacket off, and Sherlock put the bag down on the table and sat opposite him.

"This can't go on," John said quietly.

"No," Sherlock replied. "It's not good for you. You're getting maudlin. And it's annoying."

John let out a little blurt of laughter than sounded more pained than anything else. "Too bloody right," he muttered, and lifted his head enough to look over at his laptop, open but switched off, on the dining table.

"I think..." he said slowly, "I think I might have to stop blogging. Take it down."

"What?!" Sherlock cried, gripping the arms of his chair.

"She'd have less scope to get at me then," John said simply. "And there'd be less benefit to doing it. I'd no longer be 'internet famous', would I."

"But you can't!"

John frowned at him. "Why not?"

"Because...because I forbid it!" Sherlock told him, and sat up very straight in his chair, frowning hard to make sure John knew he was serious.

John chuckled. "Sherlock, it's my bloody blog. You used to hate it! No, I'm going to delete it, I-"

"Please don't."

John stared at him for a moment, then swallowed, hard. "What...why not?"

Sherlock shrugged. Because the blog was his and John's and nobody else was allowed to influence it. Because it was the record of his and John's friendship, and as such was too important to simply be allowed to cease existing. Because the sound of John bashing away at his poor keyboard as he ponderously typed up blog posts was the perfect white noise to have in the background while working through the dull bits of experimental procedures. Because it was the worst sort of injustice that John would have to stop doing something that made him so happy because of somebody else's spite.

He couldn't say any of that.

"I don't hate it. Please, don't delete it," was what he said, and it wasn't much, but it was enough to make John sigh deeply and lean his head back so far against the back rest of his chair that he was staring at the ceiling.

"Okay. All right, I won't. Yet. It might come to that though Sherlock, if it's the only way to get her off my back. I can't go on like this."

"We'll think of something," Sherlock insisted.

"Yeah," John replied, not the least bit convinced. "I'll get plates."

John ate his food quietly, barely even acknowledging the fact that Sherlock ate all of his own meal without complaining. It was an unpleasant atmosphere, especially as John usually thought of take away food as a treat. That made his mechanical chewing and blank expression all the worse, almost tragic. Afterwards he made himself tea but let most of it go cold, then paced around the living room restlessly for a while before announcing his intention to go out for a walk.

"I just need to blow the cobwebs away, you know?" he said as he pulled his jacket back on.

Sherlock nodded, pretending, as he had for the last half hour, to be busy on his laptop. He kept his eyes on the screen as John left, listened to the front door closing moments later, then opened his browser.

He was going to have to do something about this.

:::

Ooh hoo! What's Sherlock going to do?

I hope people are liking this. I know I'm really putting John through the ringer, but it'll be worth it in the end, I promise.

(Sorry that this was posted rather late at night in the end. I spent most of the day in another country, so hopefully you'll forgive me.)


	4. Decision

Sherlock recalled perfectly what he had promised to John. 'I won't click the link, I won't go on hotpages'. He honestly couldn't say if he had left himself a loophole by conscious decision or otherwise, but it was only now he had begun to seriously consider the matter that he realised that there was, very definitely, a loophole in the promise.

Sophia had put the video on several sites by now, so going on hotpages wasn't necessary. And he never really needed links.

He selected Search-Wise from his bookmarks and typed in 'Doctor Watson's Night of Fun'.

Ah. Unexpectedly, no luck. Dead links all round. John had been quite thorough in the first wave of his campaign to have the video taken down.

Sophia must have reposted it under a different name. He tried a few variations – 'Dr Watson's Night of Fun', 'John Watson's Fun Night', and so on and so forth, but the few links they did come up with led only to the accounts that John had managed to have closed or deleted. Finally, he gave up and searched 'John Watson sex tape'. There was a long list of pages discussing the matter, and finally a link to a video site imaginatively titled .

Whoever had reposted the video here had done so under the title 'horny doc waston bangs gf'. In this case, at least, Sherlock could tell that Sophia hadn't been the one to repost it. She, for all her faults, could at least be relied upon to spell correctly and use proper capitalisation. No, this was indicative of a larger problem, in that Sophia had spread the video around enough that other people were copying it, spreading it further, maybe even altering it.

Poor John.

The list of comments under the video was short, but the tone was much the same in all of them; largely onomatopoeic expressions of sexual appreciation, occasionally followed by coarsely worded compliments paid to either John or Sophia on their attractiveness (mostly Sophia) or technique (mostly John). Nothing really revealing though. Sherlock moved the mouse over the play button and...

He didn't hesitate exactly, but it struck him that this was rather a..._large_ thing to do, somehow. Not in that he was essentially going back on his word, nor in that he was effectively taking on the matter as if it were a case, but...

He wasn't certain.

He clicked play.

The little screen of the in-browser player had been frozen on a blurred image that Sherlock could only guess was somebody walking in front of the camera. When enough of the video loaded for it to start playing though, the picture became quite clear. His first observation was that the camera was obviously a good quality one, and that Sophia had done a good job of setting it up. It must have been on a stand, about six feet away from, and slightly above, the double bed that took up most of the centre of the picture. There were two lamps, one on each of the small tables on either side of the bed, lit, and also light coming in through the curtains over the window on the left of the screen. With the yellow and cream bedclothes, the pale colour on the walls, and the muted sunlight, the effect was mellow and relaxing. Completely at odds with the nervous looking, red-faced man sitting on the bed.

John kicked his jeans out of the shot, looked up beyond the camera and said...something. The sound quality was poor and his voice was garbled. He smiled briefly, tensely, and flung his shirt after the jeans, then peeled his t-shirt up and off. Sophia's equally garbled voice came from somewhere, and then Sophia herself sauntered out from behind the camera, walked across in front of it and draped herself across the bed behind John.

She was, objectively, quite beautiful, Sherlock had to admit. Her wavy blonde hair tumbled over her shoulders and swayed as she moved. She was dressed in silky pink lingerie that hugged her hourglass figure, and when she lay down, on her side with her head propped up on one hand, she arranged herself to good effect, like a model. She glanced briefly at John, who had turned to say something to her, then looked back to the camera and made bedroom eyes at it. She was obviously enjoying being filmed. Far more than John was.

It felt like something tremendously important was about to happen, but he couldn't say what or why. Sherlock was watching so intently, tense and focussed, that he didn't even notice that John had come back into the house until the living room door opened. He looked up from the screen, heart giving a sudden jump in his chest, and John opened his mouth to speak when a warped giggle erupted from the laptop speakers.

John was across the room in an instant.

Sherlock tried to slam the laptop shut, no idea why because it wouldn't achieve anything, but it seemed important in the moment. John was on him before he could though, jerking the computer out of his hands and turning it to look. He only glanced at the screen before wincing. The laptop slid out of his hands and bounced onto the sofa cushions.

"Sherlock-"

"John, I think you should know, I-"

"God fucking _damn_ it, Sherlock! You know I didn't want you watching it!"

Sherlock winced. John's face was red and his jaw was clenched so tight it looked like it could break. "I-"

"You told me you wouldn't, you as good as swore it! You know why!"

"I do, but-"

"But nothing. Nothing! I have no fucking privacy, Sherlock, none. Outside of this flat I am not John Watson, I am that guy in that video, and I fucking _hate_ it. So I want to come home, here, to my flat, and not be that video guy. Do you get it?"

"...Yes."

A flash of relief crossed John's face, and he turned away.

"Everybody else has either seen it or at least knows all about it, and everybody is different towards me now. Maybe it'll go back to normal some time, maybe not. But I hate it, Sherlock."

"I know."

John slumped onto the sofa next to Sherlock, elbows on his knees and head in his hands. "Why were you doing it?" he asked wearily.

"I...I thought I could find some way to...get at her. Make her take it down."

"Wouldn't work," John said. Sherlock wasn't so sure, but he didn't say anything.

"I just...you can't watch it again, Sherlock."

"I won't watch it again, John."

John stared searchingly at him, and Sherlock felt a pang of guilt, but managed not to show it. John sighed deeply.

"Out of everybody, it'd be the worst if you saw it."

"Why?"

John grimaced. "Because...it's you, okay? I don't want you to see me like that. I'll deal with it myself. I'll work something out."

With that, John rose to his feet and headed for the door, slowly and tiredly.

A creeping feeling swept over Sherlock, and in an instant panic started to rise up in him. It felt like something awful was about to be put in motion, but he had no idea what. Jumping out of his chair, he called John's name, unnecessarily loudly, and John stopped in the doorway and turned.

"Will...will you stay?" Sherlock asked haltingly.

"Stay...what do you mean? Do you mean stay up with you? I need to sleep, Sherlock."

"No. No, I meant stay here."

"In the flat?"

Sherlock nodded.

"Of course I'm going to stay." John sounded confused, and he rubbed his hand over his face. "Sherlock, I...you...look, I'm not going to leave my home because of something like this. Don't start thinking like that, okay?"

"Yes. All right. Goodnight John."

"G'night."

And John left the room. Sherlock heard him creak around in his room, then his usual going to bed sounds. He was still standing in the middle of the living room floor, stock still, right where his feet had landed him when he'd jumped out of his chair, when the shadow in the hall beyond the living room door changed in such a way as to indicate that John had switched off his bedroom light.

He remained rooted there, deep in thought, until long after John had gone to sleep. Because Sherlock was sure of one thing in this case, only one important factor that could break it open; John was keeping something from him.

::

The next morning, John made Sherlock a boiled egg for breakfast, and a piece of toast, and failed to say anything at all when Sherlock quietly ate both. His face was pale and drawn, his movements sluggish, and if Sherlock hadn't know that John had spent his full eight hours in bed with the lights off, he would have suspected him of having spent the night out on a bender.

"Do you have some work today?" Sherlock asked into the ringing silence of the flat, and John nodded. He didn't say anything.

"All day?" Sherlock asked.

"Ten 'til four," John replied, flat and quiet.

It was rather upsetting to see John like this, weary and drained. He looked like a different man, sounded different even, to the vital, willful man who Sherlock shared his home with. It wasn't just tiredness, Sherlock suspected, but emotional drain as well. John had spent so much of the last week and a half being angry and betrayed and embarrassed (and heaven alone knew what else) that he had worn himself down. Sherlock knew full well that he couldn't really do anything for emotional injuries. It was John that could be relied upon to work out things like that, but he couldn't very well deal with it himself in this case.

"What are you going to do today?" John asked disinterestedly.

"I think I'll write up the drug mule case. They want me to appear in court so everything will have to be set out on paper."

"Hm," John grunted in response.

"Tedious," Sherlock said.

John left the house at half past nine, coat collar pulled up against the chilly wind as he walked down Baker Street to the tube station.

And Sherlock, to his own surprise, sat at the table with his laptop and worked on dumbing down his case notes for the court hearing for hours. He was like a man possessed. Lestrade would be delighted with him. The prosecution would be over the moon. The criminal wouldn't stand a chance, but even they might be impressed.

It was sickening.

It was only as he was reading through the data at around three that afternoon, everything spelled out nice and simply for the goldfish, that he realised the reason for his unusual focus in such a mundane matter.

He was trying to distract himself.

He had managed to avoid dwelling on John's conundrum last night, but the confusion over it had been like a spectre at his back all day, nipping into his thoughts whenever he let his mind relax. And now...now he was going to have to consider the matter seriously.

What could John be keeping from him?

Was it something to do with the video directly? Or something related to it? Sophia? John's behaviour?

Did John enjoy some sort of bizarre sexual practice? Something distasteful?

No, that couldn't be it. If that were the case, at least one of the many people who spoke to or jeered at John about the video would have referenced it.

In that case, could it be something to do with John's relationship with Sophia that only Sherlock would be able to correctly contextualise?

No, because between the comments Sophia left on the videos and on John's blog, and the fact that she had posted the video in the first place, it was fairly obvious what the state of their relationship was. And even had there been some big clue to an imminent break up or similar, again, somebody would have said something.

People were nosy creatures, and liked to have knowledge over others. Sherlock was quite sure that that was why so many people protested over his deductions. It was envy that they hadn't known as much about one another as he did. It seemed natural, to most, to taunt other people with information held over them, even between friends and lovers, even...

Wait.

Wait just one moment.

Sherlock cast his mind back to various encounters over the last week, searching for a clue.

The majority of reactions from people who had seen the video, at least the ones that Sherlock had witnessed, had been from strangers or distant acquaintances, who had merely made some impolite comment towards John and then wandered off, pleased with their own daring wit.

In a few cases though, Sherlock had been able to see the reactions of friends, and John's responses in turn. Mike, Lestrade, Molly, even Mrs Hudson; all of them had watched the video, in whole or in part, and had spoken, however briefly, to John about it. And unlike other people's comments, John had listened to them, and had spoken to them. What had he said? What had he done? What had he felt?

Anger and betrayal and embarrassment, yes, but also...after that initial flurry of emotion had passed there had been some sort of questioning. What had John asked them?

Mike had been asked if he had watched the whole thing, and had confirmed that he had only seen the beginning.

What had he said to Molly? 'Anything you want to say to me?' And she had apologised. Perhaps that was what John expected, but perhaps not. He remembered the doubtful look that John had given her while she was explaining that she had thought the video was a joke. Had he expected something else from her?

He'd told Lestrade off, there were no two ways about it. He'd been more overtly angry with him than with the others, but that was possibly because Lestrade was in a greater position of trust, both as a police officer and a closer friend. Sherlock remembered the long, thoughtful stare John had given him after the initial snapping and snarling was over with, the uncomfortable glance he had sent Sherlock's way. It had been like he was waiting for Lestrade to say something else...but Lestrade had already admitted his mistake and apologised, and John wasn't the sort to demand grovelling, drawn out apologies. So what had he been waiting for?

Sally's comments had been met with appropriate dismissive scorn, but she again had received that waiting quiet, the stare that challenged her to add...what?

And Mrs Hudson, the way he'd let her rattle on, making excuses, as if he wanted to hear what she said even though it was so easy to get her to shut up or chase her away.

In every instance, John had been waiting for something from the people who watched the video, something they hadn't said, something he knew was in there but nobody had noticed. Sherlock could see it clearly now, the patterns of tension and near-relief when he had been having these conversations; John had been waiting to see if they had registered the..._whatever_ it was, and had calmed when he realised that they hadn't.

And in every case he had either checked to see that Sherlock's attention was on something else, or had looked at him to make sure he wasn't reacting to the conversation in any unexpected way.

Because John knew that if Sherlock saw the video, or if he was even given a hint by somebody who had, he would see this _whatever_ in it and he would...

He would what? What could be in this video, this intimate, unstaged scene between two lovers, that was so subtle and yet so important that John would fear it being noticed? Was it something about John himself, or Sophia, or his sexual desires or his health, or, or...Sherlock couldn't even guess. The potential was tremendous and almost frightening. Not just that John was so very worried about something, but that he was trying to hide that something from Sherlock.

John tried to hide many things from Sherlock, but he rarely succeeded and, beyond a moment of annoyance that by now seemed largely a matter of form, never really got upset when Sherlock found things out.

So what could this be? What was more stressful than having a video of oneself having sex with an ex posted online as an act of revenge?

Was John in danger?

Of course he wasn't. If he was he would have dealt with it or asked for help, he wasn't stupid.

Was there something wrong with his health?

John was derisive of people who put off dealing with health problems out of fear that they might be diagnosed with something serious. There was no way he would hide anything important in that field.

Was it somehow something about Sherlock?

Now there was a line of reasoning with some potential. John was ridiculously protective of Sherlock. If Sophia had made some comment about him, some nasty little word in John's ear, anybody else watching the video would see it as a normal event in the scheme of things. But John would want to protect Sherlock, to prevent anyone else from passing the comment on to him, to prevent Sherlock from seeing it first hand. John knew better than anyone else, better even than Mycroft and Irene and Mummy, that Sherlock could be hurt and hurt deeply. John would put himself in the line of fire to keep Sherlock from being hurt.

Could that be what this was about?

It made rather a lot of sense, but what could Sophia possibly have said or done?

And what if it wasn't the only possibility? What if there was yet still something Sherlock was missing?

Sherlock hated missing things.

There was nothing for it; no matter John's good, solid reasons for wanting him not to, he was going to have to watch the video.

::

We're finally getting there! I know a lot of you saw this coming, but I do like a build up, as those of you who read my previous stories know.

I hope you're all enjoying this, it's quite a tricky one to write but I want to get the pacing just right for what I have planned.

On another matter, do any of you out there reading my stuff play Team Fortress 2? It's a really fun video game, fighty yes, but also with lots of humour and clever characterisation, and a greats series of comics and animated shorts to go with it (and, of course, a large slashy fiction and fan art following). I ask because I got into it a few months ago and, when this story is finished and I've done a bit more of The Blue Prince, I'm going to have a crack at writing some TF2 fan fiction. I'd love it if some of the readers who like my stuff would take a chance and join me as I jump the fandom chasm (though naturally I'll hop back over to the Sherlock side fairly regularly).

Anyway, take care and see you next week :)


	5. Terrible

Again Sherlock found that he had left himself a loophole, and again he honestly couldn't decide if it had been deliberate or not.

'I won't watch it again', is what he had told John, and he would stick to that. He had only watched the first minute and forty two seconds, he had checked on his laptop when he had rescued it from the sofa. Thus he could not re-watch the first one minute and forty two seconds, as that would be considered watching _again_.

One minute and forty three seconds, and what followed, was fair game.

He knew perfectly well, of course, that John would not agree with him on this point, but he frequently did things that John did not agree with, and more often than not his friend would come around to his way of thinking when the dust had settled and everything had turned out for the best.

All the same, Sherlock could not shake off the creeping feeling that this would not be one of those situations. He was acting for John's best interests though, he was sure of that. He had to keep that in mind.

He wouldn't take the risk of watching the video while John was active this time. In retrospect, he could hardly believe he had taken such a risk the day before. He would wait until John was in bed, and then watch the video in his own room with the sound on low. The sound quality on the video was so poor that he was sure he wouldn't miss anything from not being able to hear it in detail, and the creaks of the floor upstairs would alert him if John got out of bed unexpectedly.

Thoughts of his plan drifted in and out of his mind for the rest of the day, disturbing him as he tried to work out the details of an experiment he intended to do, the underhandedness of it both discomforting and exciting him by turns. It felt like when he was a child and he would plot complex schemes to get Mycroft's Easter chocolates out of their hiding place and squirrel them away in the dead of night. Or at school, when he managed to slip out of his dorm at midnight and swap the geography and Russian masters' hair pieces. Sherlock had always done his best work late at night.

This was different though. There was more at stake here. John was important, and John needed but did not want help. He had to get this right.

When John came back from the clinic, he seemed a little more himself. He made tea and asked Sherlock about his write up and his experiment. Then he settled down in the living room to make a shopping list, as he planned to go to the supermarket on his way home from work the following day. Nice, normal, everyday John activities.

Sherlock found himself wanting John to go to bed right away. He couldn't say why; it was a ridiculous notion, it was still light outside. And yet, the closer it got to John's normal bed time (still hours away) the more agitated Sherlock became. He wanted to watch the video. He wanted to find out what John was hiding. He was champing at the bit to get on with it.

John cooked dinner very slowly, and deliberately put a plate down in front of Sherlock with the air of a man issuing a dare. As he ate, Sherlock noticed that John was yawning every so often.

"You seem tired," he noted blandly.

"Do I?" John replied, evasive and equally bland. Then something passed over his face and he gave a sigh. "Bad night's sleep last night," he added, offering an olive branch.

"Perhaps you should go to bed early tonight. I oughtn't be making too much noise."

John glanced at him with open curiosity, and Sherlock wondered if he had gone too far in being nice, but John just nodded and carried on eating his dinner.

After their meal though, John did not go to bed. First, he made Sherlock clear his flasks out of the sink and did the washing up. Then he watched the news for a while and leafed through a magazine he had bought at the tube station. At a little after nine, Sherlock decided he would do something to help John along and he went into his room and changed into his pyjamas. Seeing him in them usually seemed to have an effect on John, and it wouldn't be the first time he had managed to send John off to bed earlier than usual. If it worked.

He put his dressing gown on over the pyjamas and went back out into the living room, where John was still in his armchair, staring half-attentively at his magazine. Sherlock flopped noisily onto the sofa and John looked up.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Getting comfortable," Sherlock replied. "I have rather a lot of reading to catch up on this evening. Hence why I won't be making much noise. I might do it in my room, I haven't decided yet."

John was eyeing his midsection, and Sherlock glanced down to see that his t-shirt had ridden up over his stomach. He let it be. He didn't care if John could see his stomach, even if John was ridiculously modest at times.

"Why in your room?" John asked.

"It's nice to lie in bed and read. Don't you read novels in bed?"

"Well, yes. But that's to relax. I don't do work or case reading in bed."

"Well, case reading is relaxing for me," Sherlock replied, entirely truthfully. "We must simply have different tastes."

John snorted. "That's certainly true."

He went back to his magazine, but was clearly distracted. Sherlock stretched and snuggled back into the sofa cushions, hoping to make John feel sleepier, but John seemed to be trying not to look over at him. Did John want to avoid his tiredness for some reason?

It seemed not, because only a few minutes later John put his magazine down and got to his feet, rolling his shoulders and wincing. "I think I'm going to turn in," he said, and Sherlock suppressed a smile.

"All right," he replied casually. "Sleep well."

"Don't stay up all night," John said, but it was a perfunctory order; he knew full well that Sherlock would sleep when he wanted to and not before. He went out of the living room into the kitchen and set out a glass of water for himself, then went into the bathroom. Sherlock gathered up his laptop and, after a moments consideration, grabbed a couple of folders full of papers from the desk. Not anything he was working on at the moment, but it would do to convince John that he really was reading in his room. He timed it so that he was going through the doorway into his room at the same moment that John emerged from the bathroom and caught a glimpse of him with his armful of papers.

"Hope you get through that lot okay," John offered, and Sherlock murmured a response as he closed the door.

Good. John didn't suspect a thing.

Still feeling unaccountably excited, Sherlock put the folders on top of his chest of drawers and settled cross-legged on top of the bed clothes, laptop open in front of him, to wait. John went up the stairs, put his clothes away, got into bed, read a bit of his puerile novel, switched off his light with a click. Sherlock waited eleven minutes exactly, the average time it took John to fall asleep (information gleaned from careful covert observations) and switched his laptop on.

The website he had found the video on the day before was still there in his browser history, and he was pleased to find that the page had not been taken down yet. He carefully checked that the volume on both the laptop and the in-browser player was turned down low enough that he would barely be able to hear it, then he drew the slider on the player carefully along until it was at exactly one minute and forty three seconds.

He pressed play.

::

John reached out and ran his hand up Sophia's thigh, earning himself a flirty look, which was quickly broken when she glanced back to the camera, before pointing at him and saying something. Looking even more self-conscious, John shifted up so he could kneel on the bed and slipped off his briefs, tossing them onto the floor somewhere out of shot. His body was attractive, Sherlock supposed. He had been lean and underfed looking when they had first met, and Sherlock had seen photographs of him from the peak of his army career, hard and muscular. Since then, his body seemed to have settled into a kind of soft-edged stockiness, strong and comfortable. It suited him well.

Sophia sat up, leaning forwards so that the camera had a good view of her cleavage, and stroked her palm up the underside of John's penis. It did not yet appear to be entirely erect, but as Sophia took John's hands and raised them to her hips, slid them up her sides and then in to cup her breasts, it bobbed and perked up a little further.

John's hands squeezed Sophia's breasts tenderly, and it seemed he was speaking to her, saying something that made her smile like a cat. Her nipples were visible, peaked through the fabric of her tiny, tight negligee, and John stroked them with his thumbs and leaned in to kiss her. She reached her arms around him then, playfully slapping at the side of his thigh with one hand, while the other stroked across his shoulders. Then she disengaged and draped herself onto the bed again, on her back this time, glancing at the camera and then back to John with a distinct look of challenge.

John stroked her thighs again, both this time, his fingers creeping slowly up their inner curves, and she wriggled, apparently pleased. He slipped his thumbs into the waistband of her tiny, lacy knickers and began sliding them down and off. She lifted her legs gracefully, toes pointed, to allow him to slip them all the way off, revealing her neatly trimmed pubic hair and the faint pink lines the knicker elastic had left on her skin. John noticed (at about the same time that Sherlock did) that her attention was mainly on the camera, making eyes at the anonymous viewer, pursing her lips into kisses and squirming to make her breasts jiggle. Frowning, John touched her leg, near the back of her knee, and Sherlock couldn't quite make out what he'd done but she jumped and made a noise, and suddenly all her attention was back on John.

He smirked at her a bit, then leaned forward, lowering himself onto his stomach on the bed. He kissed her nipple through her negligee, then slid back and kissed her stomach, and then he pressed down further between her spread legs and nuzzled his face into her groin. Sherlock had heard of the act of cunnilingus, of course, had in fact seen photographs of it being performed. He had not previously had an opportunity to see how a woman reacted in real time. Sophia was obviously enjoying it very much; a pink flush was apparent on her chest and neck, her breath rate had clearly risen and her mouth was open to allow her to pant. She had one hand on John's shoulder, the other cupping and fondling her own breast, and as John worked she raised her legs and folded them around him, one over his shoulder and one around his torso. It was frustrating that it was so hard to see what exactly John was doing. Sherlock suspected that one of his hands was involved as well as his mouth, but he could be mistaken; he could be using it to...rub something? He wasn't sure.

After some minutes, during which Sophia sporadically made eyes at the camera again, and pulled down her shoulder straps so that her breasts popped out of her negligee, she seemed to be overcome, writhing and gasping, moaning loudly enough that Sherlock could hear it, garbled into rubbish as it was. He wasn't sure if that had been an orgasm, or simply the highest peak she could reach from what John had been doing, but he suspected the former once John lifted his face, damp and pleased looking, from her crotch.

John shifted on the bed so he was sitting up between her legs, and propped a hand by her shoulder so he could lean over her. He looked like he was going to kiss her, but she pulled a face and put her fingertip to the end of his nose to coyly push him away. She rolled over, positioning herself so the camera got a good view of her jigging breasts, her bare buttocks and the curve of her back as she rose onto hands and knees. John moved back a little as Sophia reached to the table next to the bed and picked up a small, square packet. Eyeing the camera, she tore it open with her teeth, then moved over to John and nuzzled his neck with over-done affection as she rolled the condom onto his penis.

As the despised Donovan had noted, John's penis was certainly a little larger than was average for a caucasoid Englishman. Not overly large, Sherlock thought, but as John himself was not a particularly big man, it seemed all the more notable. Sophia seemed pleased about his penis, whether it was due to the size or to his very obvious arousal. She groped and fondled it once the condom was in place. It made it look like a bank robber from an old film with a stocking over it's head, all squashed in and distorted.

John wiped his mouth with his hand and tried to kiss Sophia again, but was rebuffed. He said something, and she gave him an annoyed look and shook her head, making a subtle gesture to the camera. Then she pushed him down on the bed and straddled him, took his penis in her hand, and lowered herself down onto it. A strained expression crossed John's face as he seemed to be trying to stay still,while she bobbed and rocked, until he was fully enveloped inside her, and she began to rise and fall gently, with a rolling motion of her hips. Much of her attention was on the camera once again, even when John began moving his hips up to meet her, as she posed for the viewer, stretching her arms behind her head, arching her back and thrusting out her breasts. She barely glanced at John, until he again stroked his fingers against the back of her knee and made her jump.

He moved then, working himself into a sitting position underneath Sophia, and circling his arms loosely around her. They rocked together, John's hands moving in steady strokes over Sophia's back, sliding her negligee down further until it was crumpled around her waist. After some minutes, Sophia seemed to have become dissatisfied with the position and placed her hands on the mattress behind herself, leaning backwards until John got his legs out from under her and helped her to lie back on the bed. They had disengaged at some point during their movements, and Sherlock got a glimpse of John's penis again, oddly shiny and unreal looking, coated in rubber and slickness. He lay on top of Sophia and eased his penis back into her vagina, then supported his weight on his elbows as her legs came up to wrap around his waist.

Their rhythm was faster now, their attitude more focussed. Sophia barely glanced at the camera, and John kept closing his eyes to a slit, the way he did when he was trying to work out a problem. John's thrusts were gaining force, the muscles in his legs and back clenching, as if trying to hold back. Finally, Sophia gave her writhing and moaning performance once again, rather more drawn out this time, obviously orgasm. John seemed to be trying to move more gently once she had stilled, but he clearly had not yet finished. Just as she was starting to look annoyed, he crumpled forwards, pressing them body to body, burying his face against her shoulder. Sherlock could see his mouth contort as his moan crackled out of the speakers, and then he relaxed, like all the air had gone out of him.

They lay there like that for a minute or so, then John lifted himself off Sophia shakily. With a bit of manoeuvring, they ended up with him lying on his side next to her, her body obscuring most of his from the camera's gaze. Sophia was looking to the camera again, her expression one of satisfaction and smugness. She hooked her fingers into the bunched fabric of her negligee and eased it up and off as she sat. John said something to her and she shook her head, then she rose from the bed, nude and flushed, and walked out of frame.

The video stopped, leaving a still frame of John Watson, lying on his side, staring with vague apprehension at the camera.

::

It was only once the video was over that Sherlock became aware of his surroundings once again, having been so focused that he felt like he had barely been breathing.

He was certainly breathing now, heavily and throatily, like he'd been running for too long. His skin felt tingly where his clothing touched it, and there was a warm, pleasant ache in his chest, a tight, uncomfortable one in his stomach. And, when he looked down, he saw that he had an erection, a large patch of fluid sticking the fabric of his pyjama bottoms to the tip.

Why? That couldn't be! He'd watched pornography before and it had never had the least affect on him.

Still breathing hard, he reached down and slipped his hand into his pyjama bottoms...

Only to come so hard and so abruptly that he saw stars.

::

He came back to his senses flopped untidily on his bed, his hand and his pyjama bottoms soaked with semen and his head spinning.

Why had he reacted like _that_? That was the question. Was it because he knew John? Had it simply been that this video had been more real to him than other porn he'd watched, just because he knew one of the people in it?

That seemed too obvious.

But that was hardly the most important problem. As Sherlock sat up and peeled off his soiled pyjamas, he realised to his horror that his watching of the video had been in vain.

He still had no idea what John had been hiding from him.

He rose shakily from the bed, flung the pyjamas into the laundry basket and pulled some fresh ones out of a drawer and carried them into the bathroom with him. His genitals felt more tender an sensitive than they usually did after he masturbated, but he washed himself thoroughly all the same and, clean and dressed, returned to his bed and the laptop.

As soon as he touched the mouse, the frozen image of John, tired and vaguely uncertain, reappeared, and Sherlock felt the warm twitch of sensation in his chest again.

Meeting video-John's eyes, he settled himself cross-legged on the bed once again and thought hard.

There _had_ to be something in the video. John's reactions, his insistence that Sherlock not watch it, his hurried, heartfelt but incomplete excuses, they all pointed to that conclusion. And yet...what if John had somehow over-estimated Sherlock? What if they detail John had feared him seeing was invisible to even Sherlock's gaze?

No, that simply wasn't possible. If John had noticed that this...whatever-it-was was there, Sherlock would see it in time. He simply needed to...

Oh no. he was going to have to watch it again.

He had become so intensely aroused it had almost alarmed him, and now he was going to have to risk it happening again, risk feeling those sensations he had never experienced before, all over again. Could he bear it? He had to. The first time he had watched it, he hadn't been aware of his own arousal, too focussed on the video to pay proper attention to the activities of his body. That was why he had failed to notice things, that was why he had failed.

But he would make it right. He would have better control over himself this time, both because of his recent orgasm and the fact that he knew what to expect. And he could watch it differently. Yes, he could divide the video into sections and watch them in the wrong order. That ought to limit the effect quite substantially.

He could do this.

::

It was nearly four in the morning by the time Sherlock began to realise he wasn't getting anywhere.

He had successfully watched every part of the video several times over, analysed each section, watching carefully for any gestures, marks, anything that could be a clue. He had painstakingly watched every word spoken and had managed to lip read much of it. The exchange when John had tried to kiss Sophia when she had put the condom on him was, disappointingly, an offer to go and wash his face, which she had turned down because she didn't want to have to edit the video.

Just before she turned the camera off, he had asked her if she wanted him to do it, but she had declined. Nothing much in that, John was terrible with technology.

Other speech was mostly composed of compliments and encouragement, normal sex talk as far as Sherlock was aware, certainly nothing that seemed out of the ordinary.

He climbed off the bed and paced around the room. His erection, which had waxed and waned over the course of the last few hours, was in a state of semi hardness, shifting in a half-pleasant, half uncomfortable way inside his pyjama bottoms as he moved. It was distracting.

He was certain that to find out what John was so worried about would be the key to ending this mess and forcing Sophia to take down the video. Has wasn't sure why, but it felt so very important. He _couldn't_ fail.

The very thought of failing had his erection disappearing in a flash, though that warm pressure in his chest remained. He returned to the bed and sat before the computer once again, his back giving a twinge of protest as he settled back into the position he'd occupied for so many hours now. He started the video playing again from where he had stopped it, at the point when Sophia was tearing open the condom packet. He watched until she and John had their little exchange of conversation, which he had worked out so well he could practically hear them speaking.

Nothing.

He moved the slider forwards, to the part where Sophia dropped onto her back and John followed and slid back inside her, watched until she began to orgasm.

Nothing.

He pulled the slider back towards the beginning and watched John playing with her nipples through pink silk.

Nothing.

He was going to lose his mind if he had to watch Sophia any more. The more he saw of her callous attitude towards John, her smug face, her stupid fat breasts and her kissy faces at the camera, the more he hated her!

His erection was having another try, and he paused the video and stared at Sophia's contorted face until it went soft again.

He sighed and drew the slider almost to the end. He watched as John rushed to orgasm, pumping his hips and crushing his body against Sophia's, lips twitching as he moaned-

Wait.

Wait just a moment..._was_ that a moan?

He pulled the slider back by a tiny increment and watched again. John's lips were definitely moving, though as he was pressing his face against Sophia's shoulder and trembling from orgasm, the movement was disguised. This could be it!

What if he could listen to it?

Sherlock leapt from the bed and slipped quietly into the living room. The house was silent and still, and he crept carefully across the carpet towards the table. He had left the curtains open, and the light from the street lamps lit up the room sufficiently that he could easily find the pair of headphones among the clutter on the tabletop, and with his prize in hand he crept back to his room. He plugged the headphones into his laptop, waited impatiently for the quiet beep that told him they had been detected, then slipped them on and turned up the volume on the computer. With baited breath, he moved the slider back and prepared to listen to what John had to say.

Nothing.

Damn it all! The worst of it was, he could make out background noises. They were garbled and unclear, but a little attention to detail showed what they were; the rustle of sheets, panting breaths, the slight creaking of the bed. He could hear all of that clearly, so obviously there was nothing from John's mouth to hear. He moved to a different part of the video and, sure enough, when either of them spoke he could make out the sound quite distinctly, if not the words.

Whatever John was saying at the end, however, was still a mystery.

He needed to be able to see it more closely, Sherlock decided, and set about doing what he had been considering for the last couple of hours (though it was a dangerous option if John managed to look at his hard drive). He had a tool added on to his browser that let him download videos from some sites, and happily seemed to be on the list of sites it worked for. He selected the best quality version, elected to name the file 'Tax Fraud Summaries' (good camouflage against John) and waited agitatedly while it downloaded. At that time of night, it downloaded quickly, and in minutes he was dragging the file into his media player.

The quality of image was slightly better than he expected, and didn't suffer when he maximised the media player to take up the whole screen. He pulled the slider along to the last minutes of the video, and started it playing. On a larger scale, he could see the movements of John's lips a little more clearly. It was definitely a word. Two syllables, possibly three though the third may have been a gasp.

Sherlock lay on his stomach, his chin practically resting on the keyboard, all the better to lip read. He could see there was an 'l' sound in there, possibly a hard 'c' or 'g' going by the movement of John's throat, though it was always possible that that was a gulp. So he was definitely mouthing a word, but not necessarily typical words for the scenario. It wasn't an exclamation of pleasure, it wasn't a curse, it wasn't a pet name, it wasn't definitely wasn't 'Sophia', though goodness knew she probably would have loved it if he'd been crying out her name...

All of a sudden, the answer came to Sherlock like a bolt from the blue, making his heart shudder in his chest with the shock of it. He pulled back the slider and watched John's mouth again and again, and no matter how many times he watched it, the answer that had come to him was the only thing that fit.

And now he knew; he knew why Sophia had posted the video, he knew why John hadn't wanted him to watch it, he knew _just_ how terrible it was that he had watched it anyway.

And now that he knew, he had no idea what to do.

John had said '_Sherlock_'.

::

Okay, so a lot of you saw this coming. Hopefully that doesn't sap too much of the enjoyment, and I hope you liked the chapter all the same. And look! Porn!

It was a weird scene to write, as I was trying to tone it down to suit the analytical mind-set that Sherlock is trying to maintain, rather than put too much passion into it. So if it seems a bit clinical, that's why.

Don't worry; things will get a lot less clinical soon.

As always, I love any feedback and will see you again next week with the next chapter.

Take care,

DG


	6. Planning

Sherlock, unsurprisingly, did not sleep.

He lay awake, curled on his side under the bedclothes, for hours, his laptop switched off and closed on the top of the chest of drawers in disgrace.

He had deleted the video from the hard drive and taken measures to erase its presence for good, a pointless gesture as John was unlikely to ever acquire the skills necessary to retrieve a deleted document. It had given him some small measure of satisfaction though, which he desperately needed.

He had never felt so confused and, given that his career, character and raison d'etre were based around seeking out situations that had thoroughly confused everybody else, that was really saying something.

John had said his name – _his_ name – during sex with a girlfriend, which she had video-taped.

He could understand now why John had been so worried that somebody would notice. He understood why John had been so worried that _Sherlock_ would notice. He could even understand, though not condone, why Sophia had decided to post the video online.

But he still couldn't imagine why John had said it.

Over and over again he ran through the facts in his mind, as the faint light that shone through his bedroom curtains became steadily brighter, in the vain hope that if he thought about them enough, dredged up and considered every detail, it might begin to make sense.

Point 1; John's concern over his friends and other acquaintances having seen the video. Well, various people already made silly little comments about John and Sherlock being romantically involved. John usually became quite upset at the assumption. If he had been spotted saying Sherlock's name during orgasm, he would have had a hard time denying the accusation in the future. So of course he hadn't wanted anybody to see it.

Point 2; John's vigorous insistence that Sherlock not watch the video. Even with the detail of what John had said, there was probably something to John's initial claims that he didn't want Sherlock to see him during sex, that he wanted to keep a sanctuary set aside from the greater world and all the people in it who mocked him or gave him knowing looks.

Sherlock actually felt a pang of unease every time he covered that point. He had quite liked the idea of being John's sanctuary. But he wasn't any more. He knew all these things about John, what he liked and what he did and how he looked and sounded, just like all the other people who'd watched the wretched video did. Only he knew more besides.

Put it to one side for now, he told himself.

Point 3; Sophia's decision to put the video online, and to ensure that people who knew John would find it and have access to it.

The reason she had given John was her suspicion that he was cheating on her. She had refused over the phone to elaborate, insisting that he knew what her suspicion was founded on. John's denial of this had been firm, but not wholly believable. Thus, Sherlock reasoned, John suspected that she had noticed him saying Sherlock's name, or perhaps simply a name that wasn't hers, if she had been unable to lip read in detail as he had done. Thus John could not defend himself against her accusations, for fear of revealing the situation to Sherlock.

But did she actually think John had cheated on her or not?

If she had known that the name he said was 'Sherlock', she probably did not then assume John had said it for romantic reasons. By the time she and John had got together, John had become so used to the suggestions that he and Sherlock were romantically involved that he generally just laughed them off and gave them little attention. There was no element of 'protesting too much' to ignite or fuel Sophia's suspicions.

If she thought he had said a name but could not narrow down who's it was, then it was more likely that her belief that John had cheated was genuine. She would have assumed that it was a woman's name and, with John's reputation as a flirt and (as Sherlock had heard it phrased) a 'go-to' man for a one night stand, the conclusion she would have come to was obvious.

Making pornography, created by and for a lover, public as an act of revenge was not an original crime, and was becoming increasingly less rare. Laws where such acts were concerned were rather unsure and woolly. Sophia, for all her faults, was not stupid, and must have had some idea of how the matter would have played out before she posted the video. John was a relatively well known figure, thanks to the popularity of his blog. Therefore, the focus of anybody who watched the video would be on his part in it. She would be an afterthought, there to be admired for her looks, rather than reproached for her part in the acts concerned. She hadn't even been thought ill of for taking revenge in such a way beyond a few snide remarks, as far as Sherlock had been able to tell.

So; John was desperately upset and ill at ease. His reputation, previously one of a clever man with a somewhat heroic edge, was now mainly focussed on his status as 'that guy in the video'. And Sophia's reputation had not suffered a bit, as far as Sherlock could see. Probably most people who had watched the video, for whatever reasons, were glad she had posted it. As far as his research had revealed, hardly anybody saw the harm in it.

It all made sense. It all made such clear, perfect sense.

But why had John said Sherlock's name?

::

Sherlock was still awake when he heard John's alarm clock go off and John's feet lightly hitting the floor as he slid out of bed. The familiar sounds of John's morning routine were of no comfort today. With each creak of the floorboards, every click and pop of John making his breakfast, every barely audible string of notes, hummed while John showered, Sherlock felt a little stab of misgiving in his stomach, guilt and worry and perhaps even shame.

The warmth he had first felt in his chest hours ago was still tugging away, strange and constricting and disconcerting. Was that some symptom of arousal that he hadn't experienced before? Difficult to say, given his limited experience.

He was a fool. He should have taken more of the opportunities presented to him. He should have had sex with...well with _somebody_. Maybe then he would be able to make sense of what was going on.

Sherlock only became wholly aware of how tense he was as he heard John's footsteps approaching his bedroom door. Immediately, he forced himself to relax, breathing deeply and stretching out his legs. He was already lying with his back to the door, so when John knocked softly and opened it, feigning sleep was easy.

Sherlock lay there with his eyes shut, as relaxed as he could make himself, listening to the faint sound of John's breathing, the soft creak of the floorboards beneath John's feet as he shifted uncertainly.

"Off to work," John said in a whisper, after some interminable length of time. "See you later."

Sherlock couldn't tell if John had suspected he was awake or not. Perhaps every morning that he found Sherlock sleeping he would whisper goodbye to him before leaving.

It was a pleasing idea, one that Sherlock thought rather sourly that he didn't deserve.

He wondered what John's mouth had looked like when he had said it.

::

It was nearly eleven in the morning before Sherlock could force himself out of bed, and that was only because his laptop battery was dead and the charger was in the living room.

He had sat in bed reading through case notes for a few hours, wool-gathering like a fool, trying to dispel all thoughts of John and Sophia and their video (and his own name on John's lips) in the vain hope that, once he returned to thinking about he matter, he would find himself inspired.

No luck.

A little searching yielded the charger. It had become tied up in knots a few times during the last week, so John had looped it up and fastened it into a neat ring with a bag tie, leaving about a foot of loose cable at either end. Nice of him. Sherlock plugged the laptop in at the socket by the table and sat down, still in his pyjamas, to try again.

He had no idea where to start.

He opened Search-Wise and stared for long minutes at the cursor blinking away happily in the text box. Annoying little bastard. But what should he search for? One couldn't exactly search the internet for 'my best friend mouthed my name during sex'. Could he?

He tried.

Ah. More porn. And a handful of advice columns. No, no that wouldn't do. No help.

He sucked his lower lip and wiggled his fingers over the keyboard, and had been doing so for a few minutes before he realised he was doing a John mannerism. How long ago had he picked that up? Hard to say. Getting desperate, he simply typed 'sex help' into the search field and...

Goodness, that was a lot of hits. Evidently a great number of people felt they needed help with sex. Sherlock scrolled through page after page of links, running his eyes over the abbreviated descriptions of each site as he went, waiting for something to click.

Porn, naturally, in abundance. More advice articles with various different slants. Products that claimed to increase penis size. 'Toys' that claimed to increase vaginal tightness. Escort services. Specialist items that could loosely be classed as furniture...and then something finally did catch his eye.

It was one of the advice pieces, and from what was displayed of the page contents, it was something to do with ideas to help men stave off orgasm during sex, to ensure that their partner enjoyed themselves. Sherlock clicked on the link and skimmed the article, identified passages worth reading in detail, then went back and read those passages.

What it boiled down to was that men were supposed to think of something 'un-sexy' when they were about to come, and it would help them to last longer. Somebody even suggested thinking of a friend or colleague whom one considered unattractive or unappealing.

That...that made sense. John had known he was being filmed, he would want to put on his best performance, even if he didn't expect that anyone other than he and Sophia would ever see it. He had tried to make himself last longer, to turn himself off. He had thought of something that was not sexy, thought about it so intently that he had mouthed it's name to himself.

Sherlock did not fall into the realm of sexy.

He had always suspected this, despite what Irene and various largely forgettable people had told him.

He was not sexy to John. In fact, he was the antithesis of sexy.

It made sense.

Feeling certain yet unsatisfied, Sherlock closed the laptop and went into the bathroom for a shower.

:: 

Sherlock washed himself and dried himself, and dealt with the constant trial that was his hair, and put on clothes. He did all these things robotically, intently focussing his attention on the task at hand and nothing else. This was not an easy task, given the scope of his attention span, but he managed it. By the time he returned to the living room, he had successfully thought of nothing but his course of action.

Not his responses, not his...his feelings on the matter. Just the course.

He searched for and, after some minutes, managed to find the land-line phone. John had brought it with him when he moved in, though neither of them really used it. It was a battered thing of cream-coloured plastic which creaked when gripped too hard. Sherlock had memorised Sophia's phone number back when she and John had been dating, and fortunately had not been doing much in the way of deleting since, so he still had it stored.

Sophia liked to hint that she was a model or, at least, an ex-model. Now though, she worked in a tourist information office, chatting up travellers and handing out brochures. Not the glamorous career she had probably envisioned for herself in her youth. Not a career she would likely have stuck with, had she managed to marry a full-time employed doctor. It was a Wednesday, which Sherlock was fairly certain was one of her days off. He would need to make sure she was at home though.

He dialled and held the phone to his ear, and his shoulders twitched with tension at every ring.

Sophia picked up.

"Hello?"

"Hello, may I speak to the home-owner?" Sherlock said, pitching his voice high and softening his accent.

"Who is this?"

"I'm calling to offer you a great, one-time deal on the conservatory of your dreams," Sherlock replied, mimicking the mechanical tone of cold-callers as well as he was able.

"I live in a second floor flat," Sophia replied, unimpressed.

Might as well annoy her a bit, Sherlock thought.

"Have you ever wanted to spend more time in your garden, but dislike the cold and the constant barrage of insects? A conservatory could be the answer to your prayers!"

"I told you, I live in a flat. I don't have a garden. Now tell me what your company is called and take me off your damn list!"

"Our conservatories are constructed from only the finest quality materials, guaranteed to withstand-"

"Oh for fuck's sake!" Sophia burst out. "I don't want a fucking conservatory! Don't call here again!"

The phone was slammed down. Sherlock smiled.

Sophia was in.

He pulled on his coat and left the flat.

::

Tra la a, Sherlock's got a plan :D

In case anybody was interested, the search engine that Sherlock is using, Search-Wise, is a fake one that the BBC show characters in their shows using from time to time, best known in Doctor Who. Just a little detail, in case anybody was wondering why he wasn't using Google.

Also, is anybody out there coming to the Sherlock Midlands meet up this Saturday? Or the (rather larger) Sherlock picnic in Regent's Park in July? If so, I'll be there, please come and say hi :)

Take care, all.


	7. Motive

Sophia opened the door to her flat with a broad, welcoming smile, only for the expression to drop from her face when she realised it was Sherlock standing on her doorstep.

"What do _you_ want? And how the hell did you get in here? This is a secure building!"

"Not that secure," Sherlock replied. "Not if you have the least understanding of how a magnet works. May I come in?"

She folded her arms and glared at him. "Why? I don't want you."

Sherlock put on his best sincere/pained expression, lowered his eyes, then looked back up to her face beseechingly. "I've come to negotiate," he said quietly. "On John's behalf."

That intrigued her, and she appeared also to find some satisfaction in his downcast expression. After a moment of consideration, she sighed gustily and stepped back to let him in.

Stupid Sophia.

Sherlock had never been inside her flat before, he'd only seen the building from the outside when he'd met John from there once in a taxi. The front door opened directly into the living room; a large, well furnished area, with an entertainment centre over to one side and a dining table to the other, wide French windows leading out onto a balcony and a serving hatch giving a glimpse into the kitchen. Very nice indeed. He could see a video camera, a modern digital one, on the shelf beneath the coffee table, and a large, ornate wooden filing cabinet with good locks. There were knick-knacks of various types on the walls and on any bit of free space on shelves and surfaces, many of them quite expensive, some even tasteful. All a few years old though, at least. As were her clothes. As was the technology in the entertainment centre.

Oh, this was _delicious_!

Sophia pulled one of the dining chairs away from the table and sat, her back to the wall, and gestured for Sherlock to take the seat opposite. He did so, absently noting that she was trying to make him uneasy by forcing him to have his back to the room. John hated having his back to a room, even if it was empty.

As soon as he had sat down, Sophia leaned forwards, elbows on the table and chin resting coquettishly on the back of her hands, back arched to give a view of her cleavage. Sherlock fought to keep the gloomy expression on his face, rather than baring his teeth.

"So, John's finally had enough, has he?" she said.

"It's all rather gotten on top of him, yes," Sherlock admitted.

She let out a bark of laughter. "Serves him right! And I suppose you're here because you know what he did?"

"I've...become aware of a certain factor in the matter, yes," he replied. Had she noticed what he had? It had only just occurred to him, but she might have interpreted something in the video differently. Maybe he would have to play things a little cagey.

"I wondered if he was cheating on me for a while before I ditched him," Sophia sighed. "Nasty shock, when I watched it after I saw him off, to realise he had some sort of..._thing_ for you. I mean, what was he thinking? What's so fucking special about _you_?"

Sherlock shrugged. At least she had cleared that matter up for him. He hated having to play things cagey.

"Is that why you made the video public?" he asked. "Because you thought he'd had an affair with me?"

Sophia made a horse-like noise of disdain with her lips, and laughed. "Of course not! I knew full well he didn't have anything going on with you. But I'm not letting anybody treat me like that, especially not that little no hoper. Calling himself a doctor!"

Sherlock was struggling to keep his expression neutral. "He is a doctor."

"Not a proper one. Not one that makes any real kind of money. Anyway, I won't be treated like that by anyone."

"Treated like what?"

"Straying! I'm enough for any man. Why the hell should he be chasing after somebody else?"

Sherlock frowned. "But you knew he wasn't cheating on you. Did you want him not to think about other people in bed? You can't control his thoughts, you know."

"I wanted him not to be betraying me!" Sophia snapped. "I trusted him, and he went and got a silly little crush on you!"

"Well he trusted you and you went and put a video of him on the internet!" Sherlock snapped back. "How is that any less of a betrayal?"

"I was in that video too, if you'd deign to notice. I've been just as badly hurt by all this, you know. Worse in fact." She gave him a childishly manipulative look, a face threatening tears. "This hasn't been easy for me. First I lost my boyfriend, then I find out he'd been unfaithful...any then for so many people to see me like that..."

"Oh for heaven's sake!" Sherlock blurted out, having finally had enough. "You broke up with him! You knew he wasn't unfaithful! You put the bloody video online yourself! Do you really expect any sympathy?"

She scowled at him. "I deserve it," she said, with the assurance of the truly deluded. "He hurt me."

Sherlock groaned and rubbed his hands over his face. "What will it take for you to take the video down?" he asked.

"I'm waiting for the right time," Sophia replied with a smirk.

"The right time? You mean you're waiting for somebody else to notice what John said, don't you."

"Yep," and suddenly she was all smiles and self-satisfaction again. "That'll show him."

"Show him what?"

"That he doesn't get to cheat on me."

"But you said...but...you _knew_...oh Christ!" Sherlock moaned, clutching his fingers into his hair. The woman had no scrap of logic, no ability to critique her own mental processes. She was infuriating in so many different directions, all at once!

Best to get this over with.

"So your only reason for putting this video online was to get back at John?" he asked.

"Naturally. I'm not a mean person, you know," Sophia replied proudly and illogically.

"I'm afraid I don't believe you," Sherlock said.

She hadn't expected that. She had expected grovelling from Sherlock, followed by her own triumph. She jerked in her seat and glared viciously at him. "What? You don't even know me! How fucking dare you judge-"

"Oh, I'm not judging your morals," Sherlock replied lightly. "Well, I am, but that's not what I meant. I meant that I don't believe humiliating John was your only intention."

"What else could I possibly-"

"Blackmail," Sherlock said, and watched with delight as Sophia's face lost all of its colour.

"What?" she said weakly. What do you...you don't..."

"Didn't you know, Sophia?" Sherlock purred, leaning towards her across the table. "Didn't John tell you? This is what I do. I look at people and all of the little clues they give me without realising, and then I work out all their secrets." He rose to his feet and moved across the room.

Sophia got herself back together and stood up, shoving her chair back with a loud scrape. "Fuck you! If you think you can just accuse me-"

"Your video camera and tripod are good quality, " Sherlock interrupted. He was across the room by the coffee table now, and stooped to pick up the camera. The microphone was clearly integral to the device, as he'd expected. "And you've had them a while, used them plenty of times. You knew precisely how to set up the camera to make the most of the light available, and to give the best view of the bed. You also knew how to position yourself so that you could be clearly seen, and so that the viewer would be left with no doubt that you were not faking coitus."

"What-"

"And yet, the sound was terrible. It was equally poor on both versions of the video I saw, so it's easy to conclude that it was poor on the original video. Now; how would you become so good at using an all-in-one camera and microphone, the same model time and time again, without learning how to use the sound? Well, I suppose you must have been using it in situations where the sound was not important. For example - and this is supposition now but good, clear supposition – if you wanted to take still images from the video."

He glanced over at Sophia, who was looking like she'd just been punched in the gut.

Good.

"Your flat, your furnishings, your clothes, all these little decorative oddments...all of them are expensive. And yet you really aren't paid very much, are you?"

"I have money from my career as a model!" Sophia snarled.

"Nonsense! I know you _did_ model, but you can't have had much of a career, not with your attitude. Besides, why would you give up modelling to work in a tourist office? You'd carry on for a while, get enough money to retire to a life of total leisure. But no, you didn't have that option. You get your money from other sources."

"Fuck you," Sophia said, folding her arms and dropping back into her chair. "You don't even know what you're talking about. You're just trying to freak me out!"

"Am I?" Sherlock said with a smile. He put the camera down on the table and moved to stand in the middle of the room, his hands behind his back.

"You have no shame in your body, or your sexuality. I can almost admire that; it's unusual, given that the whole media has such an interest in convincing women they're ugly. It's not at all troubling to you to have others see you naked, or even having sex. So, I ask myself, how can this...let's call it a 'skill' for argument's sake, how can this skill aid you in getting money? You could act in porn, but there's still the attitude problem, and it would be tricky for you socially. You could become some sort of performer, but you think far too much of yourself for that. No, you want to know what I think?"

"Fuck you," Sophia said again.

"I think you film yourself having sex with men, send them stills from the video, and demand money to keep you from posting the videos online."

Sophia flinched and looked away from him. Direct hit.

"I suppose the advantage is that there's no need for your target to be married or in the public eye. Nobody wants a video of them in bed online. Well, hardly anyone. And if they do happen to have a family or a reputation, it just means you can demand more money."

"You're talking crap," Sophia announced loftily, and leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs, trying to look like she hadn't a care in the world. Tells, all of them. He had her.

"John was a blessing," he said in a low voice. "And he'd be even more so if somebody noticed that he said my name. A perfect example of the disaster that befalls your victims, if they don't comply. Your fancy clothes are a couple of years out of date. You haven't added anything new to this room in ages. You're getting hard up, and you need an example to convince your lovers to part with their money. I'm right, aren't I."

Sophia glowered at him, and a lesser man might have been intimidated.

"You aren't as fucking clever as you think," she sneered. "You can't go to the police with this unless you're willing to see John humiliated even more. You don't have the nerve. And besides; there's no evidence."

Oh she was so smug, so certain. So ready for a fall.

"There's plenty of evidence," Sherlock said, casually examining his nails. "You kept hard copies of all the videos."

A gamble, but it paid off, to the tune of a pained gasp and a sudden hard glance at – just as he'd suspected – that smart wooden filing cabinet. He turned to the cabinet, judged which drawer Sophia had looked at (the middle one) and tugged on the handle.

Locked.

"You can't just try and go through my belongings," Sophia exclaimed. "You need a warrant or- hey! Stop it!"

Picking the lock was the work of a moment, thanks to the picks that Sherlock carried in his coat pockets at all times. In the seconds it took him to get the drawer open though, Sophia had run to the phone, picked it up and started dialling 999.

Just as she was about to press the key a third time, Sherlock's hand closed on a jewel case, and he lifted it out to look at the DVD it contained.

"Ah ah ah," he taunted, and Sophia looked across to see the DVD in his hand. She stared for a long moment. Then she placed the phone back in it's cradle.

Turning his back on her, Sherlock reached into the drawer again and drew out several more DVDs in cases. At the bottom there were even a couple of VHS tapes. All of them were labelled with several men's names, along with dates. There was a thick folder at the very bottom of the drawer, and he lifted it out and opened it to find a sheaf of ledger sheets. She'd been keeping records of the whole thing.

"Put those back," Sophia said, her voice cold, and Sherlock turned to her with a smile.

"Make me," he replied. He rather hoped that she would try, he would have truly loved to have an excuse to punch her in the face, but she didn't. She just glowered silently, like she was trying to kill him with her eyes.

"I'm taking these," Sherlock told her. "And you can log in to your computer so I can delete the videos off that. I'll deal with the camera hard drive while the computer warms up. And if that video of John ever turns up on the internet again, I'm taking these straight to the police."

Her eyes widened. "Other people have posted that video apart from me. I can't do anything about them!"

Sherlock frowned. "By other people...do you mean your friends?" he guessed.

Sophia's flinch told him he'd got that right.

"Tell them to take it down. And to learn to spell."

He switched on the camera and wiped the hard drive while she grudgingly opened her laptop and logged in. Then he took the computer and made a very thorough search for videos and deleted them, cleared any record of them right off the thing. While he worked, Sophia roamed sulkily about the room, arms folded, glaring at him constantly. It wasn't until he closed the laptop, however, that she spoke again.

"I suppose you think this makes everything okay," she spat. "It doesn't that video is still out there. People will have downloaded it. They'll post it again. And sooner or later, somebody'll notice what John said and then there'll be trouble. How will you cope when everyone knows that he's got a thing for you, eh?"

Sherlock considered for a moment. "I'll manage," he said finally. "And as for people posting the video all over again, you'd better be poised to put a stop to that. You ought to have better luck than John did. People are more sympathetic towards women in these matters. Remember; if that video sees the light of day again, I go to the Met with all this lot, and you go to jail."

She stared at the bundle of papers and media in his hands and scowled.

"You're a fucking asshole," she said in a low voice.

"You're a blackmailer and an idiot," Sherlock replied with aplomb. "Oh, and by the way," he added as he went through the door. "You're _really_ starting to look your age."

He slammed the door closed on her shriek of outrage, and jogged down the stairs with a smile on his face.

It was a beautiful, when he stepped out of the building. The sun was bright, the breeze was gentle, and there were little birds singing in the trees that lined the quiet street. He felt so very accomplished!

He still had to confess to John. After everything that the poor man had been through in the past few weeks, he deserved to know that the worst was well and truly over. However, Sherlock had one more important errand to make first.

New Scotland Yard.

He wasn't going to wait around for Sophia to come up with some other nasty thing to do, he was going to take his armload of evidence straight to Lestrade.

He was sure John would forgive this one _little_ white lie.

::

So she was even more of an asshole than we originally thought! Up yours, Sophia!

Sherlock's got the root of the problem more or less dealt with. But now he has to cope with John. What will he do!? Tune in next week, same slash time, same slash channel, to find out.

3


	8. Solution

Lestrade had long since given up on making a fuss when Sherlock sneaked past the guards at the Met headquarters to get to his team's workroom. However, he still insisted on arguing when Sherlock let himself into Lestrade's own office to wait for him. It was silly, really. Where did he expect Sherlock to wait? If he lingered around the workroom, he would see the officers there making mistakes, and naturally he would correct them, and the officers concerned would stupidly become angry with him.

"I'm just saying, it's rude," Lestrade insisted, when Sherlock took him to task on this very topic. "And anyway, I could have confidential information in here, in view. It doesn't look good if you're just wandering in."

"Like I care about all your boring cases. The interesting ones make their way to me eventually, don't they."

Lestrade popped his bottom lip out mutinously, and glared.

"I've got something that's just up your street here," Sherlock told him, patting the pile of papers and discs that rested in the crook of his arm.

"Oh? How so?"

"An extensive and salacious case of blackmail and coercion, embodying the tired old term 'sex, lies and videotape'."

"Really?" Lestrade said, looking interested.

"Really. Well, DVDs rather than videotape for the most part, to be fair. But there are video files on the DVDs."

Lestrade reached for the pile and Sherlock held it against his chest. He was determined to do this his way, not let Lestrade jigger about with everything until it was all out of order.

"Let me explain, please, it may be a bit complicated for you."

Lestrade snorted, but lowered his grabby hands. What's on these DVDs then?"

"You recall John's ex-girlfriend, Sophia Talbert?"

"Yes."

"The one who made a sex tape with him and then put it on the internet without his permission, purely to humiliate him?"

"Ye-es."

"Which you watched, and then tried to keep the fact secret from him?"

"Uh, yes?"

"And which he spent days trying to get taken down because it was in violation of his rights, without any help from you?"

"Um..."

"Well, surprise surprise, she's awful! Truly and utterly an awful person. I just had to spend the better part of forty minutes listening to her prattle on like a concussed Myna bird, and I'm just about ready to punch somebody!"

Lestrade glanced to the plaster model of the Eiffel Tower on his desk, clearly wondering if it would be any use as a defensive weapon if Sherlock decided to attack him. It wouldn't. And yes, Sherlock was bloody cross with him, even moreso than he'd really realised before this point. However, he needed Lestrade whole and in a reasonably good mood to sort through this whole pile of dull evidence. So Lestrade wouldn't get punched, and Sherlock wouldn't get clumsily stabbed at with a tasteless souvenir.

Sherlock set the pile on Lestrade's desk and picked up the videotapes and the DVDs. "These contain further videos of Sophia having sex with various men, from whom she has been extorting money using the threat of posting the videos on the internet."

"Jesus!"

"Quite. In posting this video of John, she not only managed to humiliate an ex against whom she had a petty vendetta," Sherlock said carefully, choosing his words so as to avoid revealing John's slip, "she also provided an example to her other victims, who have been doubting the validity of her threats and thus have been slow to pay, or have simply refused to do so."

"So...she's a blackmailer?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Yes, Lestrade, well done! You solved the mystery of 'what the name of the crime is'. Excellent police work."

Lestrade scowled at him and picked up the papers. "What's all this?"

"Oh, she kept financial records."

"You're joking!"

"Not at all. In that folder, you'll find records of each and every sum of money she has extorted over the past six years, along with names and bank details for all the men concerned. It seems the credit crunch hit her rather hard; several of her marks lost their jobs and became useless to her. I've yet to find the opportunity to look and see if she put the videos of them online, but I wouldn't be at all surprised."

"This...she kept _everything_?"

Sherlock smirked. "It looks that way. Though I didn't go through everything in there, of course. It's all awfully dull. And her handwriting is atrocious. You can deal with it, I'm sure. Or have one of your performing dogs do it."

"She kept...records. Of everything. Is...is the woman out of her mind?"

"No, just rather too egotistical to be able to tell that she's actually very stupid. She seems to think that just because she's managed to outsmart people in a few, very specific, ways, she's some sort of invincible genius."

Lestrade put the papers back on the desk and stared steadily at Sherlock.

"What? What is it," Sherlock asked.

"Do you even listen to what you're saying?"

"What?"

Lestrade sighed. "Never mind. Give me the DVDs, I'll deal with the whole lot."

Sherlock smirked at him again. "Personally? I'm sure you'll enjoy _that_."

"I don't- I didn't mean- fuck's sake, Sherlock, I mean I'll take them to the right department!"

"What would that be?" Sherlock asked, frowning. "Don't you do everything?"

Lestrade gave another, far louder and wearier, sigh, and sat down on the edge of his desk to rub his hands through his hair. "One of these days, I'm going to explain to you the different departments and divisions within the police service. I'm going to do this for the fourth time, Sherlock, and this time you aren't going to bloody delete it, okay?"

"Sounds boring," Sherlock replied. "Just give all of this to whoever wants to take it off your hands. I daresay if you can get a few of the men involved to testify against Sophia, you'll be able to put her in prison easily. Blackmail is a prisonable offence, isn't it?"

"Yes, of course it is. You seem..."

"What?"

Lestrade frowned and shifted the folder of papers into his lap, staring down at it distractedly. "Usually, with you, it's all about the puzzle. You don't normally give a fig about the likelihood of putting the criminal away, you just want to work out who did it. So why are you so wound up about this Sophia? Was John really in that bad a state?"

Sherlock considered the chances of getting out of this room without answering that question and, subsequently, never having to deal with it again. They were low. He had a feeling Lestrade would be like a dog with a bone over this one, if only to help assuage his own guilt over not helping John.

"He was...deeply upset. John is loyal. Betrayal of trust cuts him deeply."

"So you want her put away because she committed crimes? Or because she hurt John's feelings?"

"That's a poor question, Lestrade. You phrase it as if the two were mutually exclusive."

"Okay, okay." Lestrade got up off the desk and put the papers down again, ambling around the room a little. "Let me rephrase it. If John hadn't bee involved in this case, if he hadn't been a victim, would you have even been interested?"

No, Sherlock thought. There were a couple of interesting points, but then there were in any planned crime. It was a three at most.

"Of course," he replied. I've never seen a blackmail case of this nature on quite such a scale before."

Lestrade didn't look convinced, but Sherlock didn't overly care. He refastened his coat and looped his scarf around his neck as he turned to the door of Lestrade's office. "You'll let me know how it works out, I'm sure," he said as he pulled the door open. "John will certainly be interested."

Lestrade muttered something vaguely affirmative in the moment before the door swung shut. Sherlock set off across the open plan office, glancing back once he was a few yards away to see Lestrade dialling his phone.

Good. He would do his part without complaint, Sherlock was sure. Donovan stared at him oddly as he left. He gave her his best enigmatic look, and hoped it made her paranoid.

::

Sherlock made his way home with a spring in his step. Or, at least, as much of a spring as one could execute on the underground. On entering 221, he responded to Mrs Hudson's cheery greeting, feeling just about ready to forgive her, and hurried up the stairs to tell John the good news.

He flung the door open to see...no John. A search of the flat revealed that the kitchen, the bathroom, both bedrooms and the tiny fire-escape balcony were all similarly devoid of John.

Where the devil could he be? It was already three in the afternoon, and it must have been no later than half past eight that morning when he left. Could he still be at work? How could he cope with such a long, tedious day of doing whatever it was he did at the surgery? Didn't he know that Sherlock was back now, with interesting things to tell him?

Evidently not, or he'd be home.

Sherlock hung up his coat and sat down on the sofa. He sat quite primly, staring at the opposite wall, for a few minutes, the picture of patience. Then he got bored, lay down, and shifted his brain into gear.

John would likely not appreciate Sherlock's efforts to help him. At least, not at first. John often argued that means didn't justify ends, an argument that Sherlock admitted was sometimes the case. In this matter, however, Sherlock's slightly dishonest means had delivered a most satisfactory end. In fact...

Sherlock got up and retrieved his laptop, then went back to the sofa with it. He opened his browser history and checked on the two websites he had used to look at the video. In both cases the player displayed only a 'video no longer available' message. Good.

Alright, so; John wouldn't like that Sherlock had gone against his word and watched the video. John also wouldn't like that Sherlock had spotted the detail that John had been trying to keep hidden. And thirdly, John would not like that Sherlock had gone to talk to Sophia about the matter.

On the other hand, John _would_ like that the video was no longer around. He would also like that Sherlock had brought a criminal to justice. And he would probably enjoy the revenge against Sophia, even if he wouldn't admit it.

So it just about evened out. Sherlock would simply present the fact of the video being gone as an opening, and admit to his having watched it once John was feeling relieved and grateful.

It was such a relief to him, it would undoubtedly feel fantastic to John. To have such a weight lifted off his shoulders would probably put him in a good mood for weeks. It felt good to Sherlock, and he hadn't even borne the brunt of it.

Actually, that...that was a little bit remarkable, wasn't it? Sherlock didn't put an awful lot of stock in instinct, but some twinge of instinct, or something like it, had him looking a little bit more closely at that thought.

He was a sociopath, undiagnosed but almost definitely. He had no empathy. He did not sympathise. He did not suffer sympathy pains for those in peril or distress, not even for John. Until now.

Well, really until recently, would be a more accurate statement. He had been feeling...uneasy about John's state of mind after all of his romantic turmoil. It was unlike him.

Perhaps it was some sort of protective imperative. That would make sense. It was natural to strive for symmetry in a relationship, to a degree. John was intensely protective of Sherlock, since that first lethal bullet to all the times he stopped Donovan from punching him. And Sherlock...he did feel protective of John. The thing was, as long as John knew which direction a threat was coming from, he could usually defend himself quite effectively. However, emotional pain always seemed to deal him a heavy blow, even when he knew it was coming.

This whole ordeal, it had hurt Sherlock because it had hurt John.

That was the long and the short of it, really. But why? Why John, who was so tough and insistently self-efficient? Why not somebody who really needed protection?

He supposed nobody else was as close to him as John was. Well, maybe Mummy. But Mycroft had the house surrounded by heavily camouflaged SAS 24/7. It wasn't like she needed Sherlock's protection.

No, John was an entirely different matter. He didn't gain anything from Sherlock's protective instincts, if that was what passed for sympathy with Sherlock. But Sherlock could not help but feel those things, and somehow it was satisfying. Satisfying to feel it. Satisfying to find himself unable to make it stop.

He wondered if John felt the same way about him. Perhaps this feeling was why John was always so ready to become violent on his behalf. John didn't do that for other people. Not to the same extent. Not for anybody. Just Sherlock.

The source of John's distress was gone now, and would soon be forgotten. Sherlock had protected John, and his cunning had always been of use mainly for himself, but now it was for John, too. Just John.

The warm feeling inside his chest was still there, tugging away at the inside of his ribs when he least expected it, like now. Did John feel this strange thing when he was keeping Sherlock safe?

Could this be something to do with-

Sherlock's train of thought came to an abrupt halt, as the door swung open and John walked in.


	9. Confrontation

John stepped into the flat, a plastic supermarket carrier bag looped around his wrist, milk and margarine and a punnet of grapes inside. He closed the door behind him, opened his mouth to say something, and stopped. He was looking at Sherlock with a sort of suspicious curiosity, and Sherlock suddenly realised why. He, Sherlock, was still lying prone on the sofa, but he was as tense as a wire.

This seemed like an important sort of moment, somehow, and in spite of all his planning and rationalising, he found he had no idea where to begin.

"Are you okay?" John asked, frowning.

"Yes," Sherlock said faintly, watching as John walked across the room towards the kitchen.

"You sure?"

"Yes. Yes, fine."

John was still frowning at him, clearly didn't believe a word he said. He went into the kitchen and Sherlock heard the sound of the fridge opening and closing, the fruit bowl scraping across the worktop as John put things away. A moment later, John returned to the living room, slipped off his jacket and hung it up. Then he turned to Sherlock with a purposeful expression.

"You were asleep when I left this morning. When did you get up?"

Oh god, not this.

"Why? It doesn't make any difference!"

"Don't whine, Sherlock, I'm worried about your health. You look terrible."

"What?!" Sherlock leapt to his feet and looked in the mirror above the fireplace. True, his hair was messed up from lying on the sofa, but that hardly constituted 'terrible'. Oh, and of course his face was pale and his eyes were surrounded by grey due to his poor night, but John had surely realised that that wasn't...

Ah, of course. John hadn't realised.

"_This_ is not illness," Sherlock told John firmly, gesturing at his face. "I barely slept last night, that's all. I don't even feel tired."

But still John frowned.

"You went to bed at a reasonable hour last night, the same time I went," he said.

"Yes, but I was going to do reading in bed," Sherlock pointed out, wagging his finger. "Not to sleep."

"You just stayed up and read all night?" 

"I..." Sherlock faltered, unforgivably. "Yes. I just sat in bed and read. Before I knew it, it was early morning, so I went to sleep for an hour or so." That ought to to it.

But _still_ John frowned.

"You know Sherlock, I know you don't like to listen when I say things like this, but I think it's time you had a proper sleep schedule, at least as far as you can work one around your cases. Why don't-"

"I don't need one!" Sherlock cried, peripherally aware that his voice was rising in pitch, like when he argued with Mummy. "I don't, John."

"I'm serious," John said in a quiet, reasonable tone, sitting down on the arm of his chair. "You've been acting strangely lately, like you're tired all of the time. I'd say you've been worried, except you don't really-"

Sherlock cut him off again. "I have been worried!"

John raised his eyebrows at him. "Really? What about? Maybe I can help?"

_Damn_! Sherlock thought furiously, but for some reason, all his usually excellent brain could come up with was; "About bees."

"...Bees?"

"They're dying in huge numbers and the UN won't ban one of the pesticides which is largely responsible." _DAMN_! That was even worse!

John gave him a real frown now, not just the stern one, but the _cross_ one.

"Sherlock, you aren't-"

"John, Sophia's going to be arrested," Sherlock blurted, and John's eyes went wide as he rose up from his seat like he'd been pulled on strings.

"She...she's...For what?!"

"Blackmail," Sherlock replied.

John's mouth opened and closed several times, no sound coming out, so Sherlock decided to elaborate. He calmed himself, picked his words carefully, and began.

"She was making video recordings of sexual liaisons with various men over several years, without their knowledge. She would then extort money from them with the threat of posting the videos online. When you and she had split up, she saw something in the video that she didn't like and decided to deliberately hurt you by putting your video online. The more tangible benefit was that it would also act as a warning against her more recent victims, who were refusing to pay."

"She...really?"

Sherlock nodded. John rubbed his hands over his face and moved around his chair to sink into the seat properly. Sherlock thought he heard a couple of curses escape John's lips, but only as a whisper.

"The video is down," he said quietly. "I mean...it's gone. I think that once Sophia and her friends take down all the ones they posted – that being all of them – nobody else will have the nerve to put it back up. And if they do, I'll deal with it."

"Her friends...Jesus," John murmured. "It's so..."

"What?"

"Cold. Callous! I can hardly believe it."

Sherlock wanted to rend his hair. "She isn't a nice person, John. I think we established that some time ago."

"Yeah, but this is just...it's just much worse than I'd expected. Much worse."

Sherlock nodded, though John wasn't looking at him. "It's all over though," he said.

He heard John swallow hard, then take a few deep breaths. Psyching himself up. To do what?

Oh: to look at him.

He raised his head and stared hard at Sherlock. "What do you mean 'she saw something she didn't like'? That's what you said, wasn't it?"

"Yes. But I...she didn't exactly say." She hadn't. Technically. Maybe. He couldn't remember all of their conversation. She talked a lot of nonsense.

"But you know anyway, don't you," John said.

"I..."

"You watched it."

"...I may have watched _some_-"

"For fuck's sake, Sherlock! You did the one thing I seriously fucking _told_ you not to do!" John was up on his feet again, red faced and stomping towards Sherlock. "Do you even understand why I told you not to watch it? Do you?!"

"Because..." Sherlock backed across the room until his back hit the edge of the mantle piece. He felt almost out of his depth. "I don't know John, I really don't. I only know that you said my name!"

And just like that, John sagged like a beach ball with the stopper pulled out. "Oh Christ," he murmured. "Oh Jesus, fucking, shitting Christ."

Sherlock flexed his shoulders, cracked his tense jaw.

"Why did you watch it?" John asked quietly, his face shuttered.

"So I could fix things."

"Fix...so you could get revenge on Sophia? Or so you could deal with the video? Or so you could satisfy your curiosity?"

It was very disconcerting when John did that. Got straight to the point like that.

"A bit of all three," Sherlock admitted.

He expected an explosion, but instead John shook his head and returned to his chair, slumping into it like he was exhausted, as sad a man as Sherlock had ever seen.

"And you don't know why," he murmured, disbelief, almost sarcasm, rich in his tone. "Come on, Sherlock. Where are your theories?"

That stung. Sherlock folded his arms and moved to stand behind his own chair, facing John but feeling more comforted than he wanted to recognise by the presence of a barrier between them. "I have one. I'm fairly sure that it's correct."

John nodded and slumped further. "Go on then. Let's hear it."

"You wanted to keep yourself...to make yourself last longer. So you thought of me to put yourself off. I read that it's a common technique to think of something one doesn't associate with sex, in order..."

He trailed off. John was staring at him like he'd been speaking in tongues. "What? What is it?"

John's mouth dropped open, and he shook his head weakly.

"That's...yeah."

There was silence in the room for longer than was comfortable, until Sherlock gave in to the need to fill it. "Surely this is better," he said, a peace offering, a plea. "Surely me knowing is better than waiting for somebody else to find out."

"Yeah," John said. "It's just...you can't know everything about everything, Sherlock. I sometimes wish you'd stop trying to."

"I know," Sherlock replied, tucking his chin a little.

"You aren't going to stop."

"Of course not."

John sighed, tired and strained but no longer angry. "I'm going to go up to my room for a bit," he said. "I just want a bit of quiet. I'll make dinner later."

Sherlock nodded. John was upset with him, so he would eat obediently, and go to bed at a reasonable hour, and John would forgive him. As John rose from his seat, Sherlock slid into his own armchair, and watched John walk out of the room, shoulders sagging. He heard the soft creaks of the old stairs and...

And was suddenly gripped by a horrible, sick feeling. It was that sensation again, deep in his chest, but this time there was something wrong with it. It was sour, pushing acid into his throat and bending his ribs in like he was choking. What the hell was wrong with him?

Somehow he had missed something. That was the only possible reason for it, surely. He leapt from his seat and rushed out of the living room, reaching the bottom of the staircase just as John got to the top.

"Wait!" he cried, and John turned and looked down at him, startled.

"What? What's wrong?"

"I have..." How could he possibly explain this without sounding like a madman? "There's this feeling that I have...a warmth, since I watched the video of you. I don't know why it's there, but it's suddenly gone wrong and I need to...John, I missed something, I know I have. But I don't know what! Please, please, I-"

John was back down the stairs now, hands on Sherlock's shoulders and eyes rapidly searching Sherlock's face. Not Doctor John though, strangely. He looked almost desperate.

"You...warmth? Not a fever though. It's...I don't..."

He was flustered, trying to glean some sort of explanation from what little Sherlock had told him, but he couldn't. Sherlock knew that, with the same irrational certainty that he knew he had to find out this last detail, this last bit of the puzzle. "What did I miss, John?"

"I can't tell you."

"You have to! Please!"

"I...Jesus, Sherlock, you don't know how bad this is going to be."

"I don't care."

John gulped loudly, ran his eyes over Sherlock once more and, apparently satisfied that his flatmate wasn't about to expire, he once again climbed the stairs, turned, and sat down on the middle step.

He took a deep breath.

And another.

And then he spoke and everything but how voice faded from Sherlock's ears.

"I haven't...Jesus Sherlock, are you sure?"

Sherlock nodded.

John sighed deeply and rubbed the bridge of his nose, then straightened up and stared straight forward, eyes settling somewhere above and behind Sherlock's left shoulder. He was resolved now. He was going to explain, Sherlock knew it. All this was about to make sense.

"I have been...having difficulty with women lately...because I haven't been as interested in them as I should be. Because I've been thinking a lot about you. I have to...the only way I can...see things through, is to think of you. That's why I said your name."

"You've been thinking of me sexually?" Sherlock managed to ask through his astonishment.

"Yes."

"_During_ sex? With women?"

"Yes! Jesus!"

"Because...no, no I don't understand it." That didn't make sense at all.

"John sighed, visibly struggling to retain his resolve. "It's because I'm attracted to you, Sherlock. I'm so..._stuck_ on you I can't function properly with anyone else." His resolve finally crumbled, and he buried his head I the hands, muttering something quietly that Sherlock didn't catch.

"That...that is absolutely satisfying," Sherlock declared.

John raised his head. "What?"

"It answers every question I had! Well, in practical terms at least. Thank you for explaining it, John." He beamed.

John held his hands out to his sides, a querying gesture. "That's it? That's all you've got to say?"

Sherlock considered, then nodded. That made so much more sense than his theory! It had seemed so disrespectful, so un-John-like, to use his image as some sort of orgasm stopper. This explanation seemed so much more in character.

"I suppose it also accounts for why you've had so many one night stands lately, yes?" he asked.

"Uh, yeah. Yeah, I suppose."

John was looking pale and unhappy still. But it would be good, in the long run, to clear the air like this. Surely.

John got to his feet. "I'm going up to my room," he said tiredly. "Just try and think about what I said, okay? I think...if you're going to have some sort of reaction to it, I want to know about it."

"Of course," Sherlock replied, confusion creeping in. He told John everything really important. Well, mostly.

"Okay," John sighed, and turned once again to ascend the stairs.

Wait, though. No. No, it wasn't satisfactory at all. Sherlock's chest was still tight, and John was still sad and Sherlock's mind was suddenly whirring frantically, because...

Because with this last piece in place everything didn't just fit, it made an entirely different picture. One that included John saying his name and the reason why, and Sophia and the one night stands, and John's dreadful fear, and everything else from the last few weeks. But there were other things in that image as well; nagging about food and sleep, smiles like sunlight, and cruel men with bloody noses and bullet wounds.

"John?" he said, his voice coming out as a croak.

John turned and looked at him, one hand on the banister, the other reaching forwards for his bedroom door handle. "What?"

The words tumbled out of Sherlock's mouth almost unbidden. "Are you in love with me?"

Sherlock heard the click of John's throat as he swallowed, otherwise standing absolutely still on the stairs. When he spoke his voice was harsh, like he'd had to force the word out.

"Yes."

::

Okay, last week I lied. _This_ is a cliffhanger.

And the thing about the bees is totally real. We know one of the main reasons why they're dying now, but hey, what's pollination when you can get cheap insecticide for your crop duster? Eh? Eh? Google up a petition if you want to help the bees. I think 38 Degrees still has one going. The bees and Sherlock and the rest of life on earth will thank you for it.

This has been an episode of DG getting political. Next week, back to smooshy smoo.


	10. Declaration

In spite of having asked the question, in spite of being quite sure that he was on the right track, and in spite of considering himself immune to surprise, Sherlock was truly taken aback by the answer he received.

_John_ was in love with him.

John was in _love_ with him.

John was in love with _him_.

He moved his mouth but no sound came out. He reached out a hand and placed it on the wall at his side, but it didn't seem to stop him from wobbling on his feet. He blinked, but must have closed his eyes for longer than he expected, because when he opened them, John was standing beside him, lifting Sherlock's hand away from the wall, turning him and guiding him back into the living room.

John's face was as pale and tense as it had been when he first found the video. Sherlock didn't understand. Was this a bad development?

"Didn't think you'd be _this_ upset," John said quietly, self-derision in his tone.

"I'm not upset," Sherlock replied as John steered him into his armchair. "I'm..."

John stared at him, gave him a reasonable amount of time in which to answer, then sighed sadly and went into the kitchen.

Sherlock frowned after him. He was...What _was_ he? He wasn't upset, he was sure enough of that. He felt oddly warm in all sort of places now, not just in his chest but in his stomach and his throat as well, like it had spread out. Some sort of emotionally driven physiological response, he was now certain. He put it to one side, for now.

What was he thinking and feeling about John?

He turned it over in his mind, looked at it from every angle.

What did it mean that John was in love with him? What did it mean to be in love with a person?

Well, as Sherlock understood it, it meant that you wanted to know that person and be with them and be all soppy over them. Possibly marry and have children. Certainly have sexual relations together.

John couldn't possibly want all that with him though. Could he?

No. No, highly unlikely.

But then, John wasn't really like normal people, was he. Maybe what he meant by 'in love' was different to what other people meant. Maybe he just meant that he held Sherlock in higher regard than anyone else. Maybe he meant that he wanted to stay with Sherlock, as they were, forever.

Which would be...lovely, actually. That would be wonderful.

Just...just wonderful.

Sherlock had let his mind drift a little, not to anywhere in particular which was unusual, when John came back into the living room holding a mug and a teacup on a saucer.

John had a) made Sherlock's tea in a proper cup, and had b) put his own tea in his favourite mug with the regimental insignia. Both were signs that John was feeling out of sorts and in need of reassurance, like a person eating comfort food or cuddling a teddy bear. Sherlock accepted the cup and saucer that was placed in his hands with a nod, then stared at the surface of the tea as it rippled unaccountably. Why were his hands unsteady?

He stared across at John, who had sat down in his own armchair, but was bolt upright, tense and unhappy.

"All right," John said. "We need to talk about this, I think."

"Very well," Sherlock replied. He waited, took a sip of his tea, waited a little longer. John remained quiet. "What exactly did you want to say?"

John let out a hissing sigh, and slumped suddenly back into his chair. "Christ, I don't know. I just told you I was in love with you and you went into shock! What the hell am I supposed to say?"

"I'm not in shock!" Sherlock exclaimed.

John raised his eyebrows at him. "Don't you feel cold?"

"It's winter," Sherlock snapped.

"It's May!"

"Really? When did that happen?"

John sighed deeply. "Some time in the last three months," he suggested. "Just drink your tea, it'll help settle you down. It was just a little touch of shock, I think. It ought to pass quickly, god alone knows you can shake it off like nobody I've ever seen."

Sherlock rolled his eyes, but took a large gulp of his tea all the same. John had put more sugar in it than usual, and slightly more milk too. He nearly complained, but almost as soon as he swallowed it he became aware of an unpleasant chill and a churning feeling that were dispelled in the moment that he realised they were there.

"I want to know how this is going to change things," John said in a low voice, as he watched Sherlock drink. "You may be able to brush something like this off, Sherlock, but I can't. Something's going to have to change."

"Like what?"

"Well..." John sighed deeply and put his mug down on the table next to his chair. "Maybe I should move out, or-"

"No! You can't! Why should you?" Sherlock demanded angrily.

"Because I have strong feelings for you that you don't return," John replied firmly. "And...Jesus Sherlock, I've been barely coping as it is. And now you know, it's only going to get harder. I'm sorry, but-"

"No! I refuse!" Sherlock said, and smacked his hands down on the arms of his chair. "You aren't moving out. It makes no sense."

"Why?" John responded. "Why doesn't it make sense? It makes perfect sense. If we're going to be able to keep going as we are – that's what you want, isn't it? - I'm going to need a bit of distance so I can...deal with things. My feelings. Otherwise I'm going to..." he paused and stared distantly around the room, into the bottom of his empty mug. "I'm just going to end up making a mess of everything."

Sherlock considered this. He quickly came to the conclusion that John's plan was unacceptable, obviously. So, he would have to change his mind.

"How are you so sure I'm not in love with you?" Sherlock asked. Good. Good start.

"Are you?" John replied.

Well..."Um..."

"I think that answers that question, Sherlock," John said dully.

"I didn't say I wasn't! I just...I don't know."

"Well, that tends to mean not."

"Maybe I'm missing something. What exactly do you mean when you say _you_ are in love with _me_? How do you know that that's what it is?"

John glared. "Sherlock, I've not made a mistake about this."

"I'm not saying you have. I just want to know." He smiled. "You know what I'm like."

John sighed gustily. He rose to his feet and paced around the room for a little while, huffing and sputtering and making attempts to say...something. Sherlock stood his ground, while seated.

Finally, predictably, John dropped back into his chair, elbows on knees, head in hands, not looking at Sherlock's face.

"Do you remember," he began, "the case of Andrew Strauss?"

Sherlock frowned. "Of course." The case had been a deeply unpleasant one. A teenage boy had been sexually assaulted by a police officer, whose friends had helped to cover it up. Strauss' mother had come to Sherlock asking for help in proving the crime, stating that it needed to be acknowledged for the sake of her son's mental well-being, that he would never trust anyone again if they couldn't at least let him see an attempt at justice.

Sherlock, to be honest, had not been interested. But John had been so gloriously angry at the very idea of what young Andrew had been through, he had agreed to have a look into the case. It had turned into something quite extraordinary; a tangled web of police corruption and abuse of power that had ensnared all of the Strauss family's home town for years. Peeling it apart had been scintillating, and quite a coup for the Scotland Yard team who finally took charge of the matter once Sherlock had done all the donkey work.

Finally, they had met Andrew Strauss' attacker. A female police officer, mid forties, objectively quite attractive. She had been unrepentant in the face of their accusations. She had stated that the boy should have just enjoyed himself. Sherlock had looked at John in that moment, and had seen turmoil occurring within his friend. Because John Watson was a hot tempered man who would fight tooth and nail in defence of an innocent person.

But John Watson, stupidly old-fashioned, did not hit women.

So Sherlock punched her in the face. On John's behalf. And John had huffed and shouted, and gone on and on about how one shouldn't take advantage of people who are physically weaker, but he had held Sherlock's hand so gently as he cleaned the split in his knuckle, and he never actually said that he wanted Sherlock not to have done it.

"It was when you hit that woman," John said, in the here and now. He still wasn't looking up at Sherlock. "It was like...you saw what I needed and you gave it to me, and you didn't want anything back and...you didn't hold anything over me. And it's always been like that. You take whatever you like from me and you – Jesus! - you put me through hell, Sherlock. But if I need something from you, it's mine and that's all there is to it."

"That's why you fell in love with me?" Sherlock asked softly.

"No, there's a whole great pile of reasons why. But that was when I realised it was happening."

Sherlock mused on this for a minute or so, then shook his head. "That doesn't explain it though, John. It doesn't explain, really, what you meant."

John scrubbed his fingers through his hair and stared balefully at Sherlock from between the heels of his hands. "All right, then. I...I don't know how...there aren't..."

Frustrated, he got to his feet and stretched his arms up towards the ceiling, then swung them down again with a big breath out, like he was getting ready to do his callisthenics. "You are...the most important thing in my life, Sherlock," he said, still not looking at him. "There are other people I love, but I would choose you over every one of them. When I'm having a hard time, I think of you to make myself feel all right again. You are...my favourite person. You're the best thing I have. And I wouldn't have it any other way."

He flopped into his chair again and fixed his eyes on Sherlock's this time, his face taught and pale. "Is that a good enough explanation for you?"

Sherlock felt a smile spreading over his face, warmth welling around his lungs until it felt like he ought to be breathing steam. "It's perfect, John. I'm glad! I'm so glad you're in love with me!"

John rubbed his temples. "No," he said.

"What?"

"No, you don't get to make this into something to use, Sherlock. I know you're possessive of me and all, and I put up with it for a lot of reasons, not just this. But you are not using this as another way to make me all yours."

He sounded really angry, and angry John was a hundred times better than the weary, forlorn creature that had been slumped in that chair moments ago. Sherlock smiled even wider.

"You don't understand, John," he said. "If your standard for love is accurate-"

"Accurate? What do you mean?"

"I mean that, if what you describe as your love for me is a _measure_ of being in love..." Sherlock paused and ran through his reasoning once more before committing himself to words, only to find it even more solid than the first time he had considered it. "I've been in love with you since the night you shot that taxi driver."

John stared at him. His fingers flexed restlessly on the ends of the arms of his chair.

"I mean, once I knew it was you," Sherlock amended.

"Sherlock, you aren't," John said.

"How can you say that?!"

"Because, what I want with you...you don't want."

Sherlock scowled. "And what exactly do you mean by that?"

"I mean sex, Sherlock," John replied, his voice flat. "I mean...you aren't interested in sex. Are you?"

"I...not generally."

"Well there, you see? You...I'm your good friend, Sherlock. I'll always be your good friend."

John seemed to think that that was the end of the conversation, and got to his feet, and made as if to walk out the door.

Potential responses paraded rapidly through Sherlock's mind, but he couldn't come up with one that would do what he wanted, that would stop John in his tracks and change his mind and stop this annoying conversation all in one go, until-

"I masturbated when I watched the video," he blurted. And really, that was worse than what he'd said about the bees.

It did the trick though. John stopped in his tracks, turned back to Sherlock and gaped at him like a goldfish.

"Well, not exactly 'masturbated'," Sherlock conceded. "I didn't really manage to touch myself much before...orgasm."

John continued to gape.

"But I'd say that that was compelling evidence that I am not unmoved by your...your physical...self." His hands had done a bit of waving around while he was searching for words, and he sternly tucked them under his thighs.

"You...but you never..."

"I have very limited experience in sex," Sherlock said. "In fact, by some people's standards, I have no experience. But I do masturbate from time to time. And I find certain stimuli...arousing."

"Sherlock, you-"

"You're very attractive, John. You put some weight on since you first moved in, and you..." he ground to a halt. The heat was in his face now, uncomfortably so.

"You got...you watched the video and..."

"I wasn't even looking at Sophia," Sherlock pointed out, just to be sure John got what he was telling him, because John picked the worst times to be thick-headed. "I was watching you and I became very aroused and I had...it was very..."

"What?" John asked, looking stunned.

"Good. It was very good. Enjoyable."

"Oh," John said. He closed his mouth, then seemed to rethink his action and let his jaw hang open again.

Sherlock got to his feet and the empty teacup, which he had left resting on the arm of the chair, tumbled onto the rug. Harmless, he ignored it. He took a step towards John.

"Are you saying you're actually attracted to me?" John asked, disbelievingly.

"I believe so."

"You _believe_?!"

Sherlock shrugged. "It's rather hard to say," he offered, aiming for coy and hitting anxious. "When I was watching the video, that was a rather unusual circumstance for me. I can't say for sure at this point that it wasn't a purely situational reaction."

As soon as the last word left his lips, his throat froze, John's eyes fixed on his.

And that was all Sherlock could say. That was as far as his courage could take him, because suddenly this was the most important thing that had ever happened to him and his nerves didn't falter in the face of madmen and murderers and explosives, but they were faltering now, in the face of John, and John had to – _had_ to – see this to the end because Sherlock...

Sherlock needed him.

So John took the final step.

He stepped towards Sherlock, he put his small, strong hands on Sherlock's shoulders, he stretched up, and he kissed him.

It wasn't like it was Sherlock's first kiss, but it might as well have been for all that it felt so thrillingly new. John's lips were chapped, with softness behind them, and his chin bore a slight scrape of stubble, and his breath was warm and bitter from the tea.

When he pulled away, hands still resting on Sherlock's shoulders, he looked terrified, all reigned in and still.

"Well?" he asked.

Sherlock tried, oh he tried, to say something clever. But his mouth had evidently given up on being able to speak, having found something much more interesting to do.

"Muh-nyum," it said.

Which at least sounded positive, if not terribly expressive.

"What does that mean?" John asked.

In answer, Sherlock put his arms awkwardly around John and pulled him close for another kiss. He wasn't quite as good at initiating it as John was; their noses bumped together a bit, and Sherlock quickly discovered that his arms were in an odd position, wrapped around each other as much as they were around John.

However, this time John opened his mouth, and Sherlock followed suit, and then John stroked the inside of Sherlock's lower lip with his lovely warm tongue, and by the time Sherlock's brain had regained itself he had managed to sort himself into a much better position.

Kissing was lovely.

He was quite sure John was better at it than anyone else he had kissed before, limited though his experience was.

It was...lovely.

Very lovely.

His mind drifted like that for a little while, while his attention was focussed on physical sensation; the stimulation of his lips and tongue, the warmth of John's body against his chest, the subtle strength of the arms wrapped around his torso.

When they stopped this time, and John looked up at him, it wasn't with worry and trepidation. His face was bright with happiness, and Sherlock's breath guttered in his throat for seeing it.

"I can't believe this," John said quietly.

"What?"

"Just...how often does a best case scenario actually happen? It doesn't."

Sherlock smiled at him, warm and shivery and childishly happy. "Of course it does, John. Statistically speaking, it must from time to time."

"Oh statistics my arse," John replied, grinning gleefully. Which made no sense, but Sherlock clutched him close and kissed him again anyway, past caring that he bumped their noses together again.

::

So there we go, part one of the pay-off!

I hope you all enjoyed that. I sort of feel like I could leave this story there (don't worry, I won't) because every major issue has been resolved. But I promised you sexytimes, and sexytimes there will be.

And I'm well aware that when John says that Sherlock isn't in love with him, and gives his reasons, he isn't taking into account that Sherlock could be asexual. I know this is a big issue, so I just want to note that. John isn't perfect, so he has missed that possibility.

To my mind, Sherlock is perhaps demi-sexual, and has a very low sex drive, at least until the right person gets him interested.

Thanks for reading,

DG


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